The hitman cometh

There’s a key phrase in this morning’s New York Times account of the Mike Lacey massacre at the Village Voice (“Village Voice Dismisses 8, including Senior Arts Editors, a ‘reconfiguration’ leaves the critic Robert Christgau unemployed”). Click here

It followed the standard boilerplate press release that always accompanies what a former Voice press critic Cynthia Cotts called “the signature New Times bloodbath.” The boilerplate: Village Voice Media/New Times/Mike Lacey described the layoffs as an effort to “reconfigure the editorial department to place an emphasis on writers as opposed to editors.” The company added: “Painful though they may be in the short term, these moves are consistent with long-range efforts to position the Voice as an integral journalistic force in New York City.”

Then comes the standard line that is widely known to all of us who have tried in vain for years to get Lacey, the editor in chief of VVM/NT and the l7 paper chain from Phoenix, Arizona, to respond on the phone or by email to legitimate news issues:

Lacey “did not return calls seeking further comment.”

Lacey is a colorful editor. After New Times purchases a paper, he loves to ride into town and shoot up the saloon
and massacre the staff and the paper. He did this in San Francisco when the New Times bought the SF Weekly and he did it with the Voice in New York. He loves to whack away at me and the Bay Guardian with long screeds (his latest, a 20-pager of high volume vitriol up on the web somewhere, with the head, “Brugmann’s Brain Vomit, cleaning up the latest drivel from San Francisco’s leading bullgoose looney.") It full of marvelous stuff and is one of my prized possessions.

But Mike and the New Times folks have a fatal flaw: They love to hit, run, and hide.

That’s how I started guerrilla blogging awhile back. The local version of Lacey's journalistic ethics, the SF Weekly, would through the years blast away at me and the Guardian and our issues with a distinct pattern: they rarely would call for comment before publication. When they did call, they would get the quote wrong or out of context. And, when we would write a letter to the editor to correct the quote or get our point out, they would refuse to run the letter and would not explain why.

So I started doing some guerrilla blogging and sending my points by email to the SF Weekly/New Times people-and, of course, to Mike safely hunkered down in his foxhole in Phoenix.

The classic was when the SF Weekly/New Times/Lacey gave me a Best of award in 2003 for “Best Local Psychic.” It read: “Move over, Madam Zolta, at least when it comes to predicting the outcome of wars, Bruce-watchers will recall with glee his most recent howler, an April 2 Bay Guardian cover story headlined ‘The New Vietnam.’ The article was accompanies by an all caps heading and a photo of a panic-stricken U.S. serviceman in Iraq, cowering behind a huge fireball. The clear message: Look out, folks; this new war’s gonna be as deep a sinkhole as the old one. Comparing a modern U.S. war to Vietnam-how edgy! How brilliant! How original! And how did the prediction pan out? Let’s see now: More than 50,000 U.S. soldiers got killed in Vietnam vs. about l00 in Iraq. Vietnam lasted more than l0 years; Iraq lasted less than a month (effectively ending about two weeks after the story ran.) Vietnam destroyed a U.S. president, while Iraq turned one into an action hero. Well, you get the picture. Trying to draw analogies between Vietnam and Iraq is as ridiculous as Brugmann’s other pet causes. Scores of reputable publications around the nation opposed the Iraq war, but did so in a thoughtful, intelligent manner. Leave it to the SFBG, our favorite political pamphlet, to help delegitimize yet another liberal cause. Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft send their sincerest thanks, Bruce.”

Three years later, the war drags on, "reputable publications" all over the country are calling it another Vietnam--and Lacey and his Best of writers and editors look like fools and we still don't know what the Lacey/New Times position is on Bush, the war, and the occupation. But this is vintage Lacey and vintage New Times politics distilled into their publication run largely on a centralized format out of Phoenix. The key point: the article was not bylined and I tried, again and again by guerrilla email and phone calls to Lacey and his SF Weekly editors, to get someone to say who conceived, wrote, and edited the item. Nobody would fess up. But I was told reliably that the writer was the cartoonist Dan Siegler and the editor was John Mecklin, then reported to be Lacey’s favorite editor and hand-picked by Lacey to take on the Guardian in San Francisco. I confronted them with emails, asking for confirmation or comment. I have not gotten any to this very day.

Alas, that in a nutshell is the political and journalistic and ethical policies that Lacey and the New Times have imposed on the Voice. No more liberal politics. No more James Ridgeway in Washington. No more Press Critic Syd Schanberg and no more press clips columns. No regular section criticizing the Bush administration and the war. No more editorials and no more endorsements and no more legendary Voice thundering away on the major New York and national issues of the day that cry out for a strong news and editorial voice from the Left.

And, according to the Times story, Voice layoffs and firings that “decimated the senior ranks of its arts staff,” including theater editor Jorge Morales, dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer, senior editor in charge of books Ed Park, art director Minh Uong, and Robert Cristgau, 64, who as a senior editor and longtime pop musit critic “helped put the Voice on the map,” as the Times put it. Cristgau had been with the Voice off and on since l969 and is quite rightly known as the dean of the Voice.

No more Village Voice as we have known it through all these years.

Instead, the Voice has Mike Lacey. I last ran into Mike at the annual business meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) in Little Rock in June.
I held out my hand for a handshake and said, in a friendly way, “Mike, how are you doing?”
He stopped, looked at me, and said, “Bruce, Go fuck yourself.” And he turned and scampered off, never to return to the meeting and never to come near me again.

Mike, get out out of your bunker and give people a chance to ask you some questions. Start a blog.

P.S. We had fun with the Best of issue. We did a counter Best of, a full page ad, titled “Best Premature Ejaculation,” a special award to the editors of the SF Weekly/New Times.
We ended with this note: “Sorry, folks: WE wish the war in Iraq were as neat and tidy as you, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft would like to think it is. But you, um, spoke too soon.”

Our postscripts drove home the points about Lacey’s style of hit and run journalism.
“PS: The real mystery of the city: who wrote the SF Weekly piece? Who assigned it? Who edited it? We’ve been calling, writing, e-mailing, and faxing the local office and corporate headquarters in Phoenix, but nobody will tell us."

“PPS: Gee, what’s the New Times position on the war, anyway. We can’t seem to figure it out.”

And, let me add in retrospect, what was their position on Bush’s reelection? Well, as far as I can tell, the only endorsement published in any New Times paper came at the end of their syndicated sex column by their gay sex columnist Dan Savage just before election day. Dan, bless his heart, came out for Kerry and is now pushing publicly for impeachment. Where's Mike? Mike? Mike? B3

A final PS point: If any one at New Times is still wondering about their pretty little month-long war that turned a president into an action hero, check out This nice item from the NY Times. We're still at war, Mike, and kids are still dying. In case you hadn't noticed.
'Voice' Staffers To Be Crying Into Their Bongs Tonight?

The Dean is Dead

'Voice' Issues Statement on Staff Decimation

Hearst was last seen covering the big Hearst/Singleton deal via Reuters out of New York. Now it is blacking out the story completely. A tale of two footnotes tells all.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Just in time to update our annual Project Censored package, the Hearst/Chronicle demonstrated yet again how the galloping Conglomerati are covering the big story in Eureka (where the MediaNews Group/
Singleton are competing headon with a local upstart daily) -- and blacking out the much bigger story in the Bay Area where Hearst and Singleton are destroying daily competition and forming a regional monopoly, aided and abetted by the McClatchy, Gannett, and Stephens newspaper chains.

The major new development: The federal judge in the
Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto lawsuit against the deal okayed an agreement between lawyers from both sides to fast-track the suit and set a trial date for Feb. 26.
Obvioiusly, this is a major local news story. Josh Richman, a staff writer for the Singleton’s East Bay group, wrote a story dated Saturday, Sept. 2, headlined “Newspaper suit put on legal fast track.” The story quoted Alioto as saying on Monday Sept. 4 that he and Reilly “are grateful that the court has ordered an expedited trial date in this very important antitrust case which seeks to prevent the monopolization of newspapers in the Bay Area.”

The story quoted MediaNews president Jody Lodovic as offering “no comment except to note that the case was accelerated by mutual agreement. Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer (B3 note: who he? where he? New York? ) said his company wouldn’t comment.” It is always great sport, of course, when publishers under fire say “no comment” to their own reporters.

Hearst’s last story on the deal came from the Reuters New Service out of New York (which it butchered, see my earlier blog.) This time, the Chronicle simply blacked out the story completely. The Singleton story left out a key point: that Hearst had invested $399 million in the deal and that the two major chains were becoming jolly good business and editorial partners in creating an unprecedented Bay Area newspaper monopoly. Both chains are sweating mightily to create the impression this is no big deal, there isn’t much of a story here, that Justice and the AG have cleared it, and Clint Reilly is just, well, Clint Reilly, and there is nothing to the lawsuit, and certainly nothing for anybody to worry about. Peace!

However, there is a deadly time bomb in the deal and it is hidden in a tiny footnote in Hearst’s July 25 filing in the suit. The footnote disclosed that Hearst is a major potential major investor and partner with Singleton. Here’s how it works: Hearst has stated repeatedly that its $299 million equity investment in MediaNews will be based on what is known as “tracking stock.” In other words, the value of the MediaNews stock will rise and fall depending solely on the performance of MediaNews businesses outside the Bay Area, which was a legal structure set up presumably to help the deal survive anticipated antitrust scrutiny.

However, Hearst admitted in the footnote that in the future the “tracking” stock “will be convertible into ordinary MNG common stock.” Hearst added that any such conversion will require additional antitrust review. Federal Judge Susan Illston picked up on the significance of this footnote in her own footnote in her ruling knocking out the Reilly request for temporary restraining order. She stated, “Although Hearst’s proposed interest in MediaNews does not include MediaNews Bay Area publications, Hearst implies in its filings that it will seek permission at a future time to convert its interest in MediaNews into MediaNews common stock.” (See the G.W. Schulz story in the current print and online Guardian).

Voila! In this mysterious tale of the two footnotes, the closely held secret is finally revealed: Hearst and Singleton are working hard to be partners, cheek to cheek, jowl to jowl, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. And this fact, among many others, demonstrates in 96 point Garamond Bold why they have employed Eurekaism and censored a big local story about newspaper monopoly, the local censored story of the year, while going hellbent to cover the story about Singleton’s competition in Eureka.

Stop the presses: Frances Dinkelspiel, in her Wednesday Aug. 30 blog (see link below), spotted a juicy Eureka and posted it under the head “Newspaper Coverage in the Bay Area is Shrinking.” Her lead: “the latest evidence of media consolidation in the Bay Area screamed out all over the front pages on Wednesday.”

She pointed out that the four major papers in the region (Hearst/Chronicle and the Singleton/Contra Costa Times/San Jose Mercury News/Oakland Tribune) all prominently displayed the same story--the story of the motorist who deliberately drove his car into l4 pedestrians, killed one man in Fremont, and injured l3 others in San Francisco.

“On Wednesday,” she said, “instead of four distinct stories on the region’s front pages, there were only two—one from the Chronicle and one from the MediaNews group.” (Merc reporters did the story for the three Singleton papers.) She concluded, “That’s a huge loss for Bay Area readers. Competition improves news coverage. What will readers miss out on in the future? What will readers miss out on in the future? This was just a police story; imagine the impact when the big story deals with corruption or another important, but less easily reported event. If fewer reporters are tracking the story, there will be fewer revelations.”
Eureka!

Postscript: Let’s keep the Eureka exercise going. Anybody who spots a Eurekaism, an example of the galloping Conglomerati censoring a local story, please send it along to the Guardian and the Bruce blog and any of the handful of independent voices left in the Bay Area. B3

The silent scandal

The Mercury News

Ghost Story

Newspaper suit put on legal fast track - Inside Bay Area

Memo the readers of the Conglomerati (Singleton/Hearst/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens papers):

Keep a sharp eye out to see if any of the papers of these big chains publish the Project Censored story. Or if they comment on it or on any of this year’s censored picks. Or if they run any real coverage of the coming of the regional newspaper monopoly, the Guardian's pick as the biggest local censored story.
(So far, at blog presstime, my agents and I have not spotted any.)

If they don’t run the story, it would be further confirmation of the reason the Guardian is happy to run the story every year as a front page special, which is then run on the website of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) and in alternative papers throughout the country. It is confirmation of the fact that not only does the mainstream media censor or trivialize lots of major stories in favor of “junk food news,” but it even censors a major local story out of Sonoma State University that has become the longest running media censorship project in the country (30 years). Delicious: censoring the censored story.

Let the Guardian and the Bruce blog know if you spot anything.

Eurekaism is now more rampant than ever. Where it will all end knows only God and Dean Singleton.

P.S. All of this censorship only illustrates a key problem with the mainstream press. The bloggers have been blogging away on these stories throughout the year and they will continue to blog away on major stories the mainstream press (and its wire service, the Associated Press) censor or trivialize. B3, blogging away at sfbg.com

CENSORED! by Sarah Phelan

The silent scandal by G.W. Schulz

Junk food news

The runners-up

EDITOR'S NOTES by Tim Redmond

The business of censoring labor by Dick Meister

The Contra Costa Times report that Hearst could end up “partly” owning the Times and the San Jose Mercury News

I was about to start my daily blog by twitting the Hearst/Chronicle for its two telling heads in today’s paper: front page in big type (“HEWLETT-PACKARD SAYS IT SPIED ON REPORTERS.” And then a David Lazarus special across the top of the business page: “HP’s investigation broke state laws, attorney general says.” Good stories, important subject, good to see the AG awakening from his slumbers, but……why can’t Hearst and the AG move on the big CENSORED media monopoly story that I have been blogging on for days and George Schulz laid out in our current Project Censored package, “The Silent Scandal, How does media concentration affect the news we read? Just check out the coverage of the latest newspaper merger.”

Then I got a rocket from my reliable source in Contra Costa County who reported that the Times had run a major story today by George Avalos stating in its lead that Hearst “could wind up being partly owned by the current owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, according to documents filed in connection with a federal antitrust suit.” Its head: “Media firms’ deal disclosed, Lawsuit declaration reveals new details about MediaNews, Hearst financial arrangements.” The Merc ran a six-paragraph story, from “Mercury News Wire Services,” saying the same thing. The Oakland Tribune/Singleton ran a short version of the Avalos story. And the Chronicle/Hearst as usual blacked it all out and have yet to report its financial and stock involvement that in effect partners Hearst and Singleton.

Amazing. The documents have been publicly available for weeks. But only now, after the Bruce blogs and the Schultz story, have two Media News papers reported some critical details of the regional monopoly. And Hearst, with its vast business and court political reporting staff, somehow can't cover the story.
Why?

There were significant quotes in the Times story: “Executives with MediaNews refused to comment. Frank Vega, publisher of the Chronicle, said, ‘I really don’t have any comment about the lawsuit. This is a Hearst-MediaNews deal.’” In other words, Dean Singleton/MediaNews out of Denver and Hearst out of New York are calling the shots and that is a prime reason for the local censored coverage in all Hearst/ Singleton papers. Impertinent question: Why don't MediaNews executives and Vega demand that their editorial staffs cover the story or perhaps demand that they be allowed to cover the story?

Read the Times and Merc stories below, then read my previous blogs and the Schulz story to get a fuller perspective on what is going down here: a quiet move by Hearst/Singleton, aided and abetted by McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens, and facilitated by Justice and Atty. Gen. Bill (the Consolidator) Lockyer, to kill newspaper competition in the Bay Area and impose deadly regional monopoly. That is the real story and I hope the Conglomerati begin to allow their reporters and editors to start doing real reporting on the biggest censored story of the year. I am certain they would love to do it, allegro furioso.

Memo to Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto: you are doing good, keep on rolling. Memo to Carl Jensen and Peter Phillips at Project Censored: congratulations, you have once again confirmed the value of your project. Memo to the Conglomerati publishers: Publish the Censored stories and give us a ray of hope for the future of journalism in the Bay Area.

Meanwhile, to get the news on monopoly journalism. read the Bruce Blog, dammit! B3

P.S. Reporting in on Sunday evening: still no Hearst/Singleton/Gannett/McClatchy/Stephens story on the Project Censored package.

Contra Costa Times

The Mercury News

Why didn’t the Conglomerati Media cover this major local news story?

Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, will make a rare mainstream media appearance at 8:05 a.m. Wednesday morning (Sept. l3) to discuss the l0 big stories the nation’s major news media refused to cover last year, as the Bay Guardian put it in its cover story of the last issue.

Peter will explain lay out the stories and explain why the media
censored the following top l0 stories (in descending order):

l. The Feds and the Media Muddy the Debate over Internet Freedom.

2. Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technology to Iran.

3. World Oceans in Extreme Danger.

4. Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the United States.

5. High-tech Genocide in Congo.

6. Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy.

7. U.S. Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq.

8. Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act.

9. World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall.

10. Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians.

And then there are the junk food news stories that got far more attention than they deserved:

(l) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Got Together. (2) Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson Break Up. (3) “American Idol” Hits an All-Time High. (4) The Runaway Bride who didn’t. (5) Martha Stewart is Back in Town. (6) “Brokeback Mountain” Breaks Through. (7) Britney Spears (it just wouldn’t be a list without her. (8) MySpace Infiltrates our Space. (9) Steroids in Baseball Get Pumped Up. (l0) “The DaVinci Code” ad nauseam.

A tip of the derby to Willie Brown and Will Durst and Producer Paul Wells and the Quake/Clear Channel Radio for being the only mainstream media in the Bay Area to our knowledge to give the proper publicity to this important local story and local project (Sonoma State University).

Memo to Phillips, Will and Willie: ask if anybody has spotted the story in any mainstream media. That proves the censorship point.

I (B3) will appear on the show at 9:05 Thursday morning (Sept. l4) to discuss why the local regional monopoly (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens) has not only blacked out this major story but also one of the biggest local censored stories of the year (the regional monopoly). Memo to the editors and city desks of the Conglomerati: why did you black out these major censored stories? B3

And now this: Are the Conglomerati going to buy the Santa Cruz Sentinel?

The timing was exquisite. This morning, in preparing to appear on the Will and Willie show on 960 the Quake, I checked the Chronicle/Hearst to see if there were any timely new developments on the biggest censored media story of the year—how the Conglomerati are censoring and trivializing their coverage of their move to regional monopoly. (See my blogs and the Guardian’s Project Censored package in last week’s edition).

I checked first to see if a Hearst policy story was tucked away as it often is on page 2 of the business section under the “Daily Digest” head. (The last one was a Reuters story out of New York.) Today I found that the Chronicle moved the story up a notch but still buried it under the fold on page l of the business section under a head that read “Complex deal ties Bay Area papers” and continued the Hearst strategy to confuse and bore anybody trying to follow its monopolizing shenanigans.

And so I was able to report on how Hearst portrayed the unprecedented deal: folks, this is a complex deal and a complex story and it doesn’t affect you and please don’t bother reading about it. Just move on.

But I noted that the story did acknowledge what the Bruce Blog and the Guardian had been reporting for weeks: that Hearst and MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton were partners in the regional monopoly deal, according to a sworn affidavit by James Asher, Hearst’s senior vice president and chief legal and development officer, filed in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit against Hearst and Singleton. And the story used this lead to characterize the partnership: "The two companies that own all the major daily newspapers in the Bay Area could become even more closely intertwined, according to a court papers filed in a federal antitrust lawsuit." The second paragraph said that "New York's Hearst Corp. could become part owner of MediaNews, a Denver company that owns the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal and several other Bay Area. papers."

I also pointed out that, to my knowledge, none of the Conglomerati (Hearst/Singleton/McClatchy/Gannett/Stephens chains) had (a) run the big Project Censored story and all had (b) censored and/or trivialized their coverage of their own deal. And I noted that all of this confirmed in 96-point Tempo Bold the value and virtue of Project Censored.

I was also happy to congratulate Willie Brown and Will Durst (the Will and Willie duo) and producer Paul Wells for being the only mainstream media show to my knowledge to give Project Censored an airing (featuring an extensive interview yesterday of Censored Project Director Peter Phillips and my Censored update today.)

Later, when I got back to my office, I found that a Peninsula Press Club blog jumped on paragraph eight in the Chronicle story, which said that the two parties in the lawsuit on Monday had "agreed to seal documents in the lawsuit unless they are already public information." The blog noted that "newspapers usually fight attempts to suppress public records" and labeled the move a “self-imposed secrecy order" by Hearst and Singleton. It all but asked the obvious question: Will this kind of secrecy be yet another adverse effect of the coming of the Conglomerati? B3

Postscript: And now this: the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today that the Conglomerati may soon own yet another daily on the outside ring of the Bay Area: the Sentinel, which competes for now with the nearby Monterey Herald/Hearst/Singleton and is up for sale by its owner Ottaway/Dow Jones. The Sentinel reported that “bids for the Sentinel are due today and while no one is making public who, if anyone, is interested in the paper, industry analysts name William Dean Singleton…” Media consultant John Morton said, "'I wouldn’t rule out anybody, but the most likely buyer is the one who owns the most newspapers in the area.’” Hearst and Singleton papers didn’t carry this story. When will they?

Impertinent questions: Where are the antitrust consolidators in Justice and AG Bill Lockyer’s office? Will they once again remove all pebbles and hurdles in the path of yet another clustering consolidation?

Callers to the Quake show had good questions: what can be done about this march to newspaper monopoly? Not much, I said, ending with my stock answer: support your local alternatives.

Personal note to the caller who said I brought up these issues when he was a student in a journalism class I taught at Cal-State-Hayward in the early l970s: answer my blog or send me an email at bruce@sfbg.com and let's catch up.

Santa Cruz Sentinel

Peninsula Press Club

“Investment management excellence, world-class service and guidance.” Positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website.

This morning, my wife and I had an unusual message on our answering machine at home from a customer representative at Charles Schwab. It said that Schwab was notifying us formally that the T. Rowe Price fund family had notified Schwab that “they are restricting your account from any further purchases into Price funds. If you have any questions please call me back.”

I picked up the phone and asked the representative, a most friendly and helpful fellow in Schwab’s Phoenix office, to explain his mysterious message. He said, a bit sheepishly, that my wife had sold a Price fund in her IRA account after holding it for six weeks and that Price had a policy (unbeknownst to us) that you can’t sell a fund until you have held it for six months. Price was penalizing us by restricting us from making any further purchases in the Price family by my wife or me in our Schwab accounts. She bought the fund in July, on advice of our investment advisory newsletter, and sold it last week because it had become volatile.

Where did this policy come from, I asked, and why were we not notified of this policy when we bought and sold Price funds, and why were we suddenly hearing of it in this embarrassing way. I told him that our investment advisory newsletter had advised its readers to buy the fund and wrote that there was no redemption fee. Neither Schwab nor Price had given us any notice of such redemption restrictions and penalties. And, I emphasized, I had never heard of Price and Schwab imposing such restrictions and penalties on longtime investors and added that I had never heard of any funds or fund families anywhere imposing such restrictions and penalties without proper and timely notice to its investors. What in the world was going on here?

The Schwab rep apologized, said he was just the messenger bearing the bad news for Price, and gave me the name of a Price rep that the company had designated to answer questions on restrictions: Mia Bartee, at 4l0-345-5597.

I called her immediately and got an answering machine and instructions to leave a message. I detailed my complaint on her answering machine and asked her to call me back as soon as possible and explain the mysterious restrictions and penalties to me. I also asked her to give me any reason why we should ever again invest in the Price family of funds and its “investment management excellence and world class service and guidance.”

At blogtime, still incredulous, I am anxiously waiting for her to call back. Stay tuned.

P.S. Justice through blogging: I will regularly report on consumer problems that I or my colleagues encounter and you can follow how I go about it, as a semi-professional consumer complainer. Let me know of any juicy ones you encounter and how you have fared. Maybe we can provide some object lessons on how to get some justice through blogging. Anybody having any luck with Comcast? B3

Some documents to be kept under wraps in suit claiming purchase of Times, Mercury News creates local monopoly

To the good: this is not a Bruce Blog head. This is the head and subhead on a surprisingly good story by George Avalos in today’s Contra Costa Times that gives some indication that the old Knight-Ridder fighting spirit on public access and accountability is still in play despite the new ownership of MediaNews Group/Dean Singleton.

More to the good: the story, unlike the Chronicle/Hearst coverage, lays out one of the key points of the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit: that, as the lead says, “a wide range of documents could be kept secret in a lawsuit involving a realty executive and the owner of most of the Bay Area’s newspapers, including the Times.” Still more: the ruling by a federal judge “enables the parties in the suit, including defendants MediaNews, Hearst, Gannett Co., Stephens Group Inc, and a partnership of several of the newspaper companies, to keep numerous documents confidential and free from public scrutiny.” And Avalos got a key point into his story with a quote from Reilly attorney Daniel Shulman: “Newspapers believe the public should know about everything, unless it is information about newspapers.”

To the bad: Avalos allowed Media News/Dean Singleton to put its position in the story via an anonymous “representative for one of the newspaper companies that are defendants in the lawsuit.” This anonymous source put forth without gulping the monopoly boilerplate position: gosh, golly, gee, “the newspaper companies could be hurt competitively if some of the information is released to the public.”

Unsolicited advice to reporters and editors who have the uneviable task of covering the monopolizing moves of their monopolizing superiors: Do not let them get away with anonymous quotes from anonymous executives. Tell them to speak by name and title or the Bruce Blog will get them.

The critical point: there is a big difference between sealing records in a standard civil lawsuit between two competing companies and sealing records in a lawsuit that aims to, as Avalos rightly puts it, “derail and unravel the MediaNews Group purchases of the newspapers” and stop MediaNews from wielding “monopoly power over the Bay Area newspaper market.”

The Galloping Conglomerati, as I call them, already operate in effect unregulated public utilities, because of their monopoly positions in their (mostly) one newspaper towns. And, unlike PG@E and other utilities, they are exempt from public regulation because of the First Amendment. Now they are quietly seeking to lock up the area for good and impose in effect a regional unregulated public utility under one partnership on the entire Bay Area. This is heavy stuff and every major development in this saga ought to be on the front page of every paper and lead the broadcast news of every station in the Bay Area.

Go, Clint, go!!! B3, still blogging away on behalf of independent and competitive journalism

Contra Costa Times

Repeating the positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website:

“Investment management excellence, world class service and guidance”

As you will recall from my Part l blog on T. Rowe Price, I put in a call and left a message last Friday with the official at T. Rowe Price mutual fund family who could explain the mysterious restrictions and penalties placed without notice on my wife’s IRA account by Price for selling a volatile Price fund in some sort of violation of Price redemption policy.
Price also mysteriously applied the restrictions and penalties to my IRA account.

I asked for a call back and I still have not gotten a callback. So I called twice today and neither time could I even get through to an answering machine. The phone just rang and rang.

So I checked with the Price website and found five general information email addresses to send my blogs and questions to in an attempt to get someone to talk to me. Again, I am seeking an explanation of what happened and why we should ever again invest in the Price family of funds and “its investment management excellence and world class service and guidance.” Stay tuned.

Memo to Price: Where does a customer go with questions and complaints? B3, looking for just plain old-fashioned Rock Rapids (Iowa) service and guidance

Repeating once again for even more emphasis: “Investment management excellence, world class service and guidance” (Positioning line at the top of the T. Rowe Price website)

By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

Five days after putting my pointed questions to a voice mail at the T. Rowe Price headquarters in Baltimore as to why the company was calling my wife an excessive trader of mutual funds, I got a call back from Ben Scherer, from the risk management team of T. Rowe Price Financial Institution Services, as he is called.

He was an affable chap with the air of a seasoned flak catcher out of Tom Wolfe's short story on mau-mauing the flakcatcher. He apologized for the troubles, and said that the person I had been calling at Price (on my own dime) had left the company three weeks before and that it was the fault of Charles Schwab for giving me her name and not giving me the Price 800 toll free number for answering questions and complaints. (I didn’t even ask why, if she were indeed gone, that there was not a message on her answering machine explaining that she was gone and who to call in her stead. I made five calls to her number.)

I asked Scherer why Price had told my wife, via a telephone call from a Schwab customer rep, that she (and I) could no longer invest in any Price funds because she had violated Price trading policy (unbeknownst to us) by selling a Price fund (quite modest) in her IRA account (quite modest) because Price had a six month hold on trading its funds. My wife had bought her Price fund in July and sold it in September, on advice of our financial advisory newsletter, and Schwab had not advised us of any hold policy. (The Schwab rep told me that Price is one of only a very few fund families that impose such penalties and restrictions and that this restrictive policy is difficult for Schwab to deal with. He said Schwab was working on a pop-up to let investors know of such restrictions, but it was not yet up and running.)

Where, I asked Scherer, did Price notify its customers of its penalties and restrictions? He said it was in the fund prospectus and could be viewed or pulled down from the Price website. He e-mailed to me under the ominous head "Excessive Trading Policy" a copy of the fund prospectus. And there it was, buried deep in the prospectus under the title “excessive trading policy,” a line that said “persons believed to be short-term traders may be barred for 90 calendar days or permanently from further purchases of Price funds…”

Let’s have a show of hands: how many investors would turn cryptographer and plow headlong into a prospectus to ferret out this nugget of legalese before investing? Let's have another show of hands: how many small investors, poring through a prospectus and running into the clunky head "Excessive Trading Policy," would stop and think it applied to them and try to figure out that it meant expulsion and banishment? Further: Price policy says “may” and so Price has the discretion of barring or not barring investors from further fund purchases. So I emailed Scherer and asked more questions: why had Price used its discretion to designate my wife and me, without real proper notice or warning, for expulsion and banishment? Why, with such a severe and unappealable penalty, did Price not work out proper notice with Schwab? Why did it not highlight the penalties at the top of its prospectus or at least in the table of contents or somewhere and instead bury it under mountains of legalese? Why, when confronted by annoyed customers, did it not budge and try to make amends and work to keep longtime customers? Why did it not take the occasion to display “investment management excellence and world class service and guidance?” The email back from Price, unsigned this time, read like boilerplate and avoided most of my questions and notched up the stonewall.

And so alas I must have a chat with my crazed short term and excessive trader wife and see what we should do: fire Price or start reading every prospectus, line by line, page by page, from top to bottom, before investing in any more Price funds with Charles Schwab.

P.S. Unsolicited advice: to Price, Schwab, and all investment advisors and advisory newsletters everywhere: if anybody is imposing severe penalties and talking expulsion and banishment and exile for small individual investors with modest accounts, please give them fair warning in advance. And please don't blame the victim when you get a complaint. B3

On the eve of Josh Wolf going to jail, and on the eve of Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada facing yet another federal decision moving them ever closer to jail, I was honored to be the lead speaker at the fundraiser and going-back-to-jail party for Josh last night at Crash, a club on Mason Street in San Francisco.

I made two major points: first, that this was the only city in the country to my knowledge that had three reporters who were in jail or heading to jail, on orders from Washington, for failing to produce sources and material in federal cases. This was no mistake. This was a direct hit at San Francisco, the country’s leading city for dissent and anti-war movements for decades, and came down directly from the Bush Administration and its PATRIOT Act politics as a way to scare the city and put its dissenters on notice.

My second point was that I was speaking as a member of many journalism organizations (from the Society of Professional Journalists, which has already contributed $30,000 to Josh’s defense, to the California First Amendment Coalition to the California Newspaper Publishers Association to international groups from the InterAmerican Press Association to the World Association of Newspapers to the International Press Institute) and that these professional organizations either are or would be in solidarity on this common ground journalism/public service issue. They could be counted on. But the Josh Wolf case was different because he was a lone freelance video photographer, without a news organization and attorneys behind him, and he looked like easy prey for the local cops and the feds.

That, I noted, was what was so important about the Crash event and the emerging Josh brigade. The event was lively, well attended, lots of fun, and demonstrated that a freelancer who stands tall, as Josh is doing, can build a strong grassroots constituency capable of mobilizing sustained resistance.

The real outrage is that the local cops turned Josh’s case over to the feds and gave them another timely target for Bush in San Francisco. And the cops did so secretly and unilaterally, without going to the mayor, to the supervisors, to the district attorney, to the Police Commission. The cops who are fighting like hell to keep beat patrolmen out of the neighborhoods and were happy to invite the feds to come to town and rough up our press and our public on their behalf. At minimum, that move demands public hearings by the supervisors to determine how this happened and what can be done to see that it never happens again.

Today’s Chronicle blaring front page head said: “SILENCE MEANS PRISON, JUDGE TELLS REPORTERS” No, silence in this case for these three reporters means principle and honor and holding your ground under fire. There is no principle or honor for the people in Washington who are working overtime to put in jail three reporters who were doing their job at this critical moment in the City and County of San Francisco.

I'm off to Mexico City where democracy is being tested on an almost daily basis. I am attending as a delegate the 62nd annual assemble of the Inter American Press Association. IAPA is an effective organization in promoting and defending press freedom in the Americas from Canada to Argentina and points in between. It has been for decades a key player in promoting democracy in the Americas. The Guardian's John Ross has been filing excellent reports from Mexico City (see links below - more online at www.sfbg.com):

Warning: Blue jeans are dangerous to human rights

Anatomy of a scandal foretold

The Delegate Zero factor

No Pasaran!

I'll try to keep you posted, B3.