By Bruce B. Brugmann

Hurray for Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist for the l7 Village Voice/New Times papers in major markets with major battleground races for the election.

Savage performed heroically under fire and managed to get some key election endorsements into the second to last paragraph of his syndicated sex column in the crucial issue before one of the most important elections in modern history, a plebescite on Bush, the war, and the occupation. (New Times papers historically don't do endorsments and don't allow their writers to endorse.) He ran a letter in his column from a Wisconsin male who wrote, "Wisconsin needs your help!. On Tuesday, Nov. 7 we're voting on an amendment banning gay marriage. As a married heterosexual male I'm supposed to feel threatened by gays getting married, but I'm smart enough to realize it doesn't affect me at all. I also realize that I got to marry whomever I wanted, and everyone should have that right. Urge your readers in Wisconsin to vote NO on the marriage amendment. Thanks!"

Savage gave the writer the ultimate Savage compliment: "You put it better than I could, JIW. I would add: The amendment in Wisconsin bans gay marriage and civil unions. Vote no."

Then Savage continued his endorsement: "And to my readers in Colorado, Idaho,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Virignia, Arizona, and South Dakota: Please vote against the gay marriage bans in your states, too. And in South Dakota, please vote to overturn your state's idiotic abortion ban. And to my readers in Canada: Be glad you don't have to put up with any of this shit."

In the presidential race two years ago, Savage snuck his Kerry for President endorsement in the last line of his pre-election column. This time, he slipped his endorsements into the second to last paragraphs, with a neatly disguised ending to his column with a diverting letter from a woman who claimed she couldn't have an orgasm until age l8. She then took some pot with a "cooperative boy friend and--bam! --six orgasms in five minutes." And he signed off, "Thanks for sharing." And sent his readers off to a Savage website to learn more about pot and sex. Well done, Dan. A masterful job.

Meanwhile, Savage's endorsements were the only real endorsements to be run in the pre-election issue of the Voice, probably one of the first times in Voice history, if not the first, that this bastion of New York liberalism has been Voiceless and neutered and has not endorsed candidates or run serious political coverage in an election. (Why? I put the questions by email to Voice/New Times CEO and chief executive officer Jim Larkin, Executive Editor Michael Lacey, and David Blum, the new Voice editor in chief, but got no reply by blogtime.)

Instead, the Voice this week ran a gripping "report from the trenches of 'Saturday Night Live'--dress rehearsals, wrap parties, last-minute sketch changes, a l a.m. phone call from Lorne Michaels (and yes, Andy Samberg!") with a front page illustration of a smiling comedian doing the Bronx shrug. I kid you not. Check the link below and the Voice website and see what has happened to the mighty Voice in the short nine months since Larkin, Lacey,and the Arizona Gang got ahold of it. Meanwhile a quick check showed that none of the other l6 Voice/New Times papers ran any endorsements in their pre-election issues, with the possible exception of the OC Weekly in Orange County. An editor sent me an email saying they were doing endorsements but I could not find them at blogtime.

Well, Nathan Blumberg, my first journalism professor at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in l953, used to say that a paper that didn't run endorsements didn't have any balls. He used the word testicles, because this was Nebraska in l953, but the class all got the point. So: does this mean that Dan Savage has balls, and Jim Larkin and Mike Lacey don't have balls? Let us let the readers decide.

P.S.1 It's hard for the staff members of a Village Voice/New Times paper to say much inhouse or publicly about the management style and editorial policies of Larkin and Lacey. For example, note what happened to poor David Schneiderman, the former Village Voice top guy since l978, who they sacked unceremoniously last week. VOICE BOSS GAGGED," chided the New York Post head. The Post noted Larkin's subtle style when it quoted an insider as saying about Schneiderman: "The new guys held him in complete disregard. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company's web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke." Schneiderman will go down in journalism history as the guy who sold the Voice to New Times, and pocketed $500,000 for his work on the deal, but even he probably didn't deserve the Larkin/Lacey treatment.

P.S 2: Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, the SF Weekly/
Village Voice/New Times ran a front page page illustration of two gay comic figures I can't quite characterize, but sported the head, "DRAWN TOGETHER, Graphic Homosexual comics and the young women who love them."
Smith came the closest to a political endorsement when he meandered around with the two major candidates in District 6, Sup. Chris Daly and challenger Rob Black, and wrote a self-immolating piece titled, "Vulgar posing, How our columnist was seduced into watching the World's Largest Female Bodybuilder beat up on Rob Black." After missing, mangling, mushing, and making fun of the issues, Smith came up with two summary questions but no clear endorsement: "Isn't Daly the vulgar jerk who threatened the democratic process? What about the gentility-in-public-life rap Black's been giving SOMA condo dwellers? Black is gone. I don't feel like chasing after him with my facile questions." Well, Smith concludes, "Alone, in SF Weekly's offices, beer on my breath, an awful sort-porn video on the VCR, I realize I've beens seduced by the poses of two political hacks."

News flash to Smith: There are real major issues in this district. For example, Calvin Welsh lays out a big one in a Guardian op ed this week, "Don't for a minute believe that he (Daly) is in the fight of his political life because he's rude, because he doesn't care about lw and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market rate housing slated for this district and is far too protective of lower income residents in District 6." He concludes: "There's a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? Smith, Larkin, Lacey, Voice/New Times folks, do you realize it?

P.S.3: At blogtime, Jonny Diamond, the editor in chief of L magazine in New York, replied to my query about Voice endorsements with this quote: "Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it's the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story (and he gave me the link). Remarkable stuff from the country's formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm elections in a long, long time. I'd say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we're working on something for Friday."

So, to get election endorsements and coverage in New York, forget the Voice and
go to the website of the L magazine, a zippy New York arts and entertainment biweekly under the direction of the Steadman brothers.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we may have heard the final word on the eve of the election from the Larkin/Lacey/VillageVoice/NewTimes/SF Weekly crew in San Francisco and New York. Maybe Larkin will stop reading the paper long enough to send me comments or explain to the readers of his l7 papers why they don';t endorse or do serious election coverage. I'll let you know. If anybody spots a political endorsement in a Voice/New Times paper, flash me the word. B3, hoping good news is on the way on the way Nov. 7th

VOICE BOSS GAGGED: SCHNEIDERMAN IS OUSTED BY NEW OUT-OF-TOWN OWNERS:
By KEITH J. KELLY

October 27, 2006 -- DAVID Schneiderman is out as president of Village Voice Media nine months after Phoenix-based New Times took over the alternative weekly newspaper chain.

Following the takeover of the Voice by New Times CEO James Larkin and Editorial Director Michael Lacey, Schneiderman stayed on as president of the combined company, which took on the Village Voice Media name. He split his time between the company's headquarters and Seattle, where his wife Dana Faust, a New York Times ad executive handling the Pacific northwest, is based.

However, few expected him to stay for long as he was clearly a man without a power base. He was given the job of exploring Web opportunities for the company, an area in which he had scant expertise. Even after he immersed himself in the new role, it didn't impress the new cowboys from Phoenix.

"The new guys held him in complete disregard," said one insider. It got so bad that one source said that while Schneiderman was in New Orleans recently delivering a presentation on the company's Web progress, Larkin made a point of taking out a newspaper and reading it while Schneiderman spoke.

Reached yesterday, Larkin said of Schneiderman, "He resigned."

Asked if there would be a replacement, Larkin said, "We are going to restructure." He declined further comment, saying, "We don't comment on personnel matters," he said.

When reached by Media Ink, Schneiderman, said, "I've been approached by people in the venture capital and private equity world. I just felt the time to move on was now."

He insisted that his deal as Voice president was "open ended" and that he could have stayed longer.

But making frequent trips between New York, Phoenix and Seattle "was wearing on me."

"Waking up in my own bed for awhile is important to me," he said.

The Boston Phoenix was reporting yesterday that its editor Bill Jensen had resigned to accept a job running Web operations for Village Voice Media, its parent company.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Let me cite yet another example of the dangers of the Hearst/Singleton move to destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the Bay Area.

As attentive Bruce blog readers know, I always turn to the second page of the Chroncie/Hearst business section called "Daily Digest" to pick up the news that Hearst is censoring. Yesterday, I spotted yet another nugget
that demonstrated how Hearst was censoring a major scandal story involving its own subsidiary in San Bruno and McKesson Corp., one of the nation's largest drug wholesalers.

The story looked harmless enough, a six paragraph Associated Press story headlined "McKesson soars above expectations," with a lead that said that the company's "quarterly profit climbed 37 per cent to soar past analyst expectations, prompting the nation's largest prescription-drug distributor to brighten its financial outlook." Another five paragraphs provided the details of this seemingly rosy McKesson story.

So, knowing there was much more to this story and getting my blogging genes at the ready, I checked the online version of the story. Imagine my surprise when I found that the guts of the Chronicle story had been cut out of the paper and the juicy stuff was tucked away in the online version. A full seven paragraphs had been chopped from the print version of a l6 paragraph story by Michael Liedtke from the San Francisco AP bureau.

Let me quote the key chopped out paragraphs to make my point: "McKesson released its results and bullish outlook after the stock market closed Tuesday. The company's shares fell 60 cents to finish at $50.09 on the New York Stock Exchange. After an early rebound in after-hours trading, the shares shed 5 cents.

"The downturn extended a recent slump triggered nearly four weeks ago by news of a tentative legal settlement that could depress prescription drug prices. (b3: a dreadful thing.)

"The settlement covers a class-action complaint alleging that drug price publisher First DataBank Inc. (B3: a Hearst subsidiary in San Bruno) had conspired with McKesson between 2002 and 2005 to boost the wholesale cost of most prescription medicines by 5 per cent. (B3: a tidy newsworthy sum).

"Although McKesson has denied any wrongdoing and isn't joining the settlement, investors are worried the agreement will force the company to lower its prices (b3: another dreadful thing). Consumer advocates have estimated the settlement will save health insurance plans about $4 billion (b3: a nice newsworthy figure). The settlement still needs approval by a Massachusets federal court, something unlikely to happen before April..."

Note my previous blogs to get the scope of the Hearst shenanigans at work here. AP doesn't put Hearst into the story where it belongs and doesn't even identify FirstDateBank as a local subsidiary owned by Hearst, the biggest daily in Northern California and a big bankroller and participant in the Singleton move to monopolize the Bay Area. Hearst doesn't properly edit the AP story and put Hearst high up where it belongs. And Hearst actually cut the print version of the story and put the guts of it up online at SF Gate so it will be hard to spot. And of course Hearst never ran the original story of the scandal (reported first in a lead story in the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal, with versions by the AP, the Guardian, and even the Hearst-owned Houston Chronicle, see my previous blogs.)

The hinge point: Hearst went to these embarrassing lengths to censor a major scandal story involving Hearst, and three local companies, to protect its corporate interests and refuses to explain this professionally glaring omission in the stories, or to its readers. It also refuses to answer my questions directed to Hearst corporate in New York City via Hearst San Francisco and publisher Frank Vega, Executive Editor Phil Bronstein, Managing Editor Robert Rosenthal, and Business Editor Ken Howe. And the "competitive" Singleton papers haven't done the story either to my knowledge and won't explain why.

Impertinent Questions: If Hearst and Singleton won't compete on a major scandal story like this, where will they compete and when do they start? How can they censor and cover up a major story like this in the midst of investigations by Justice and the AG?

This sorry episode illustrates a key issue for the current Justice and AG investigations into whether the Hearst/Singleton deal violates U.S.and state antitrust laws. It also illustrates a key issue for the highly important Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit seeking to blast apart the Hearst/Singleton financial relationship. I refer again to Brugmann's Law: Where there is no economic competition, there is no news and editorial competition. So the thrust of any real antitrust investigation ought to be to stop monopoly moves like this and insure real newspaper and media competition.

We hear that Justice is at least doing lots of interviewing. God knows what Lockyer and his antitrust crew are doing as he heads into the sunset to be state treasurer. His probable successor, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, operating under the thumb of the Oakland Tribune/Singleton, has refused to comment or answer questions as to whether he will continue Lockyer's purported investigation. Reilly and Alioto are hard into discovery, working with the media documents they obtained from Justice and the AG as a result of their suit. The documents were filed by the principals in the original merger (McClatchy, Hearst, Singleton, Gannett, Stephens) to get preliminary Justice and AG approval. They are certain to be illuminating. Impertinent Question: Why is it that, once again, Relly and Alioto must do the heavy lifting in a private suit because Justice and the AG have so far knuckled under to the chains and refused to do their job.

Repeating the Impertinent Questions to Hearst and Singleton editors and publishers: Why haven't you done this major scandal story? When will you do it? If you won't do the stories, please explain. Until then, let's have no more macho talk about competition between Hearst and Singleton papers. B3

P.S. Let me quote the third paragraph from the WSJ to dramatize the heft of this story: "A 2002 email by a manager of (McKesson) describes how pharmacies would be able to more than doiuble their profit for dispensing the cholestrol drug Lipitor and adds, 'that is awesome.'" The article quoted an economist hired by the plaintiffs who estimated that savings in 2007 alone at $4 billion. There is much, much more. The Hearst and Singleton papers would cover this national scandal in a flash if it involved any other big company in their territory. Hopefully.

A tough pill to swallow by G.W. Schulz

McKesson's fiscal 2Q profit rises 37 percent to top analyst views by MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer

I put out a call to the alternative press across the country to see if anybody could spot an endorsement or strong political story in pre-election issues of Village Voice/New Times papers. (Scroll to the bottom for some vintage Mike Laceyism and some answers to the pressing question of the day: who has the real balls: Dan Savage or Mike Lacey?

The OC Weekly in Orange County did endorsements this year, but that appeared to be the only one of the l7 Voice/New Times papers that did. I also asked Voice/New Times CEO Jim Larkin and Editor in chief Mike Lacey, as well as the new Voice editor David Blum for their comments and for their rationale for not running endorsements in one of the most important mid-year elections in U.S. history. No reply. Here are a few of the replies that came to me by private email:

From: Ron Kretsch, Art Director, Cleveland Free Times, which competes with the Voice/New Times-owned Cleveland Scene

Sending the entire altweekly industry on a snipe-hunt, Bruce? Niiiiiiice.

(B3 comment: Back where I come from, at Camp Foster on Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa, we called it whippenpoof hunting. But we never found any.)

Actually, I found something - Derf has this in the obScene this week: Cleveland Scene Election 2006. Then again, you did specify "serious coverage" - yeah, go ahead, post my comment. I doubt I'll have much crow to eat.

And yeah, we had pretty substantive election coverage - I think in terms of quantity of coverage we actually outdid our election '04 issue, which by my reckoning has never happened before for a midterm or an off-year. Even some obscure-seeming judicial races got the flashlight shined on 'em. It worked out to be a pretty damn fine issue.

************************
From: an East Coast blogger
Okay, I'll play. Here's a story broken by Bob Norman in Broward-Palm Beach that could have a big impact on the gubernatorial race there.
Broward Palm Beach

You won't find endorsements, of course, because they don't do any. But you will find coverage of the elections. Bob Norman down in south Florida (who wrote the piece I just sent you) is one of their good reporters on the politics beat.

(B3 comment: Thanks, glad to see an election story in a New Times paper in Florida. But they still didn't do endorsements. And I'm still looking for someone who can tell me the reason for this policy.)

************************
From: Jonny Diamond , editor in chief of The L Magazine in New York City

Yes, the Savage stuff is in, but it's the only thing remotely related to the election in the entire issue. This is the cover story: Village Voice Cover Story - remarkable stuff from the country's formerly foremost alt-weekly on the eve of the most important midterm election in a long, long time.

I'd say this is the final, no-doubt-about-it end of the Voice. As for our own coverage, we're working on something for Friday... best Jonny Diamond

It is as silly as it seems. The movie stuff is atrocious. The cover stories laughable. And people are noticing. Here's our endorsement, btw. The L Magazine Endorsements. I'd really appreciate if you could link to this, it deals explicitly with the The Voice's failure to step up. Thanks, jd

(B3 comment: Perhaps this is a snapshot of the situation in New York. The Voice, a liberal bastion in New York for its entire history, endorser in all elections, didn't endorse or even run a strong election story in its pre-election issue or an explanation of its knuckling under to the New Times template. However, the L Magazine, a a relatively new arts and entertainment fortnightly, did, happily and with gusto and with every intention of beating the Voice/New Times in every election hereafter. Note its coverage in the link above.)

************************

From: a Manhattan media watcher

Bruce, they don't have anyone on staff at the Voice any more who is either competent or even interested in covering local politics. It's just way too cerebral for any of them now. Sad to say, but it's all fluffernutter stuff. Anything above 34th Street doesn't exist.

++++++++++++++

From: Anthony Pignataro (former OC Weekly staffer)

Editor, Maui Time Weekly
This week's OC Weekly has tons of political coverage, including this list of actual endorsements: OC Weekly

(B3: at last, a Voice/NewTimes paper that made endorsements, the OC Weekly in Orange County. So Will Swaim, a strong liberal editor, joins Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, as the only two who got endorsements into New Times papers. How did Will do it? I sent him an email but didn't hear by blogtime.)

************************
From: The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies
Speculation About VVM's L.A. Moves 'Simply Silly,' Lacey Says
From: LA Observed
Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece
Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed
Scene at the Weekly
Stewart gives notice
On Jill Stewart at the Weekly
Big turmoil at the Weekly

(B3: There was so much turmoil at the LA Weekly that it was hard to tell what happened this year. Harold Meyerson "quit" writing his excellent political column and no endorsements appeared in the paper, though the paper has for years been a traditional endorser and many ex-staffers and ex-managers were pushing for endorsements this year.)

Meanwhile, the LA Observed media site summed up the Weekly's sudden knuckling under to Voice/New Times non endorsement policy: "Since the Weekly has dropped its well-read pre-elecition endorsements, City Beat (B3: the competitive alternative in LA) has jumped in to fill the void. The paper backs Democrats for all the state offices except Governor (no endorsement) and insurance commissioner (Steve Poizner over Cruz Bustamente.) Locally, they recommend yes on H and no on R." And they give a link to the full list.

Meyerson addressed the issue in a farewell email to the staff (see link above) in which he addresses the New Times template: "The paper's decision, for the first time since forever, not to run endorsements makes that even clearer (that Lacey/New Times have have forced a reverse in editorial policy). Tha's unfortunate, but it's no disgrace. But becoming a tabloid in the New Times model is absolutely a disgrace. The New Times model churns out 'gotcha' news stories, it snipes at an undifferentiated establishment, it makes little effort to understand larger social issues at work in a city (that would require deviations from the model), it has a weakness for rants. It produces columns like 'LA Sniper,' in the Jill Stewart mode of reducing commentary to drive-by shootings..." (B3: Stewart is the new deputy editor in charge of news and wrote in her last independently syndicated column that
she was "thrilled to be joining the Village Voice Media chain under Mike Lacey."

More on Lacey's management style: In a letter responding to Meyerson's criticism of the LA Weekly (see above link), he sums up: "But the reasons why Meyerson's contract with LA Weekly was not renewed transcend finance and are on display in his embarrassing note to the staff. His ethical lapses, motivated by decades of cronyism, are aggravated by his insufferable pomposity.

"'Hey, Kids,' is his salutation.

" 'Hey, Hack,' is my response."

(B3: Lacey, for all his lathering and steaming, still does not address the fundamental issue of why the New Times and now, sadly, the Voice papers, refuse to endorse. So once again: Is there someone somewhere, inside or outside the Voice/New Times, who can say why their papers do not endorse in any election and in particular in a extraordinarily critical election that amounts to a referendum on Bush, the war, the occupation, and his domestic policies?

What's Lacey and the New Times afraid of? Of annoying their advertisers? Of giving up control to local chain editors who may (gasp!) be more liberal than the gang in Phoenix? Are they worried their endorsments would disclose just how cynical Lacey and the New Times are in their politics and in their view of the cities in which they have papers? MIke? Mike? You sound real big and tough, writing from a safe haven in corporate headquarters in Phoenix, and attacking as a hack a highly respected liberal LA Weekly veteran.

(Could you explain why Dan Savage, the gay sex columnist, has the only real endorsements in all the Voice/New Times papers in his sex column (excepting the OC Weekly, bless their hearts)? Why do you and the Voice/New Times contiinue to duck the tough issues and endorsements in election after election as a matter of institutional policy? As you will recall, Dan went into Pennsylvania at a critical moment in the campaign and gave Sen. Rick Santorum some much justified trouble on the gay family issue. if Santorum goes down, Dan can take some credit. What can you and the Voice/New Times say about the way you wimped through another election? Why does Dan have the balls and you do not? Mike?

B3, working hard in San Francisco to create and perpetuate San Francisco Values (note: SF Chronicle head yesterday: THREE DIRTY WORDS: SAN FRANCISCO VALUES, front page, lead story, big type, no blushing)

By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

As the rest of the press (mainstream and alternative) was publishing endorsements and election coverage for Tuesday's referendum on Bush and Iraq, Mike Lacey, editor in chief of the Village Voice/New Times papers, was down in Los Angeles at the LA Weekly stoking yet another of his signature bloodbaths (see my previous blog below).

Lacey killed the Weekly's influential and widely read political endorsements, making this election the first time in memory that the Weekly did not run endorsements. He oversaw the firing of News Editor Alan Mittelstaedt and the hiring of Jill Stewart, described by Kevin Roderick in LA Observed as a "Lacey favorite columnist at the old New Times Los Angeles." Lacey also oversaw the sacking of Harold Meyerson, the highly respected veteran political columnist who was regarded as a Lacey target because he was liberal and activist. (Lacey wouldn't renew his contract.) And, when Meyerson complained in an email to the staff about a front page story in the current edition in the New Times template, Mike savaged him publicly with a classic New Times rant and rave.

Michael Sigman, former president and publisher of the LA Weekly, made the appropriate comment to LA Observed: "I worked with hundreds of smart writers and editors during nearly 20 years at LA Weekly. Harold Meyerson is one of maybe two or three whom I would describe as a genius. His loss is unfortunate for the paper, and more unfortunate still for LA."

Sigman was being diplomatic. In my five decades or so in journalism, I do not know of a more vicious public attack by an editor on a staffer. Moreoever, this was not just an attack on Meyerson as a columnist and major Weekly presence for years but it was an attack on the paper, on principled journalism, on the Weekly constituency, and on Los Angeles by the editor of a predatory chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Here is the lineup that shows the Voice/New Times priorities in the runup to the election:

+Meyerson's farewell column.

+Meyerson's email to the LA Weekly staff in which he said, among other things, that "Anyone who spends a nano-second looking at the paper understands that New Times template is already in place, and I know from countless conversations that editorial staffers live in fear of geting the ax if they deviate from it. That's sad for the city, sad for the paper, and sad for those of you who work there and are in no financial position to leave (a position I understand very well)."

+Lacey's "Hey Hack" response.

+And my previous blog on Voice/New Times policy of not allowing their papers to endorse--and my critical question arising therefrom: Does Dan Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls? My vote is for Savage. He got endorsements in every one of his pre-election sex columns run by New Times papers. A bravura performance on pre-election deadline. And Lacey of course was being Lacey. And, thanks to Lacey and his regime, the LA Weekly of Jay Levin, Ron Curran, Harold Meyerson, Mike Sigman, and scores of fine journalists and staffers on a special journalistic mission is gone. Alas. Alas.

Our Town, Our Paper
L.A. and the Weekly, in hindsight and foresight
By HAROLD MEYERSON

Lacey on Meyerson and LA Observed

Dear kids: Meyerson sad about Contreras piece

The comments roll in on the search for endorsements in Village Voice/New Times papers? Is it a snipe hunt? Does San Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls?

I posed a question to my grandson Nicholas Perez, age l2, a math whiz and computer games afficionado,
to figure out for the Bruce blog how long the Iraq War has lasted in comparison to the U.S. involvement in World War II.

He just sent me an email answer, on deadline, for my pre-election blog.

He says that WWII lasted l,328 days from Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, l94l, to VJ day (Victory in Japan) on Aug. l5, l945.

Which means, he says, that Nov. 7, the day of the election, the Bush War in Iraq has lasted as long as did the U.S. involvement in WW II.

Imagine: That ought to be front page news on election day across the land: REPEATING AND UNDERSCORING: THE WAR IN IRAQ HAS LASTED AS LONG AS THE U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN WW II. Vote against Bush and for peace on as many fronts as possible. Vote early and often.

Personal note to Tara and Murali in Chennai, India: Thanks for your call just now on my blog deadline and your encouragment to Sock It To Bush. My prediction is that the U.S. voters will put the Democrats back in power in the House, will win or come very close in the Senate, and will all in all deliver a resounding rebuke to Bush on Iraq.

Postscript: On the non issue of Kerry's "botched joke": I found most annoying the people who criticized Kerry, and who ought ought to have known better and were purely grandstanding (starting with Hillary Clinton among the Democrats and John McCain among the Republicans) and the media that took it seriously and helped the Republicans pump up yet another phony campaign issue. They gave the cheap shot a new dimension. b3

Just in from a former LA W'eekly sales staffer (from LA Observed.com, the online media site that people in the media business read in LA). For the best coverage of this rollicking tale, go to the LA Observed site.

Culture war at LA Weekly: A former sales staffer speaks out...

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Congratulations to Dan Savage, editor of the Stranger in Seattle who writes a syndicated sex column called "Savage Love" for the Voice/New Times chain and other papers. I am toasting him once again with a Potrero Hill martini at our neighborhood local.

Dan performed heroically in the referendum on Bush, the war, and neocon policies. He helped knock out Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania with personal appearances in the state. He managed to get key endorsements into his column in the ll New Times papers that traditionally don't endorse. He helped voters in Arizona (the non-endorsing Voice/New Times is headquartered in Phoenix) to be the first in the nation to reject a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage. He kept a liberal and activist spark alive in his column in the Village Voice (and the other Voice papers purchased last fall by New Times and were therefore shut out of doing endorsements and strong election coverage. They were besides the Voice, the Minneapolis City Pages, Seattle Weekly, Nashville Scene, LA Weekly, and OC Weekly, all of whom traditionally did endorsements and strong election coverage until the sale to the Voice. The OC Weekly to its enormous credit did endorsements.)

Dan also wrote a typically useful op ed piece in today's New York Times, titled "The Code of the Callboy" in which he explains why the callboy outed Ted Haggard, one of the most powerful evangelica ministers in the country. "Ultimately," Savage wrote, "it was Ted Haggard's hypocrisy--railing against homosexuality and campaigning against gay marriage while apparently indulging in sex romps with a gay escort--that prompted Mr. Jones to shove him out of the closet. The homophobia promoted by Mr. Haggard and other agents of intolerance, if I may use John McCain's phrase (he's not using it any more), undermined the callboy code of silence that Mr. Haggard himself relied on. Most callboys are gay, after all, and most are out of the closet these days.

"And while most callboys will continue to respect a code of silence where the average closet case is concerned, the Ted Haggards of the world have been placed on notice: You can't have your callboy and disparage him too."

Repeating: Dan, in this critical election, showed he had more real balls than MIke Lacey, the editor of the Voice/New Times papers.Dan, Keep it up, B3, savoring the ascendancy of San Francisco Values and Guardian editorial positions

PS: Repeating: The staffs of New Times papers have been long baffled by the New Times non-endorsement policy. And the staffs of the Voice and other Voice papers who had been endorsing and doing strong election coverage were particularly baffled when Lacey shut down their endorsement process this year without explanation. What are Lacey and the Voice/New Times afraid of? Of annoying their advertisers? Of giving up control to local chain editors who may be (gasp!) more liberal and activist than the gang in Phoenix? Are they worried that endorsements and strong political coverage would disclose just how cynical and out of touch Lacey and New Times are in their politics and in their view of the cities i n which they have papers? That chain-driven endorsements would expose the template that Voice/New Times uses in their papers? As always, I will send this blog and these questions to Lacey in Phoenix for comment. Stay alert.

By the way, MIke, what do you think of the election results? Will your papers be allowed to comment on them?

Is Mike Lacey for real? More on Mike's massacre at the LAWeekly/Voice/New Times and the culture war at the LA Weekly
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

Lacey's Wednesday night massacre. The LA Weekly's Harold Meyerson says to all staffers on the l7 Voice/New Times papers: Don't deviate from the template or you are out. Lacey publicly savages Meyerson.
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

The comments roll in on the search for endorsements in Village Voice/New Times papers? Is it a snipe hunt? Does San Savage or Mike Lacey have the real balls?
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

Dan Savage comes through in the clutch. The gay sex columnist endorses in his pre-election column in the Voice and other New Times papers, but the Voice and New Times papers do not endorse. Hurray for Dan Savage!!!
By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

Repeating: whenever the Voice/New Times buys a paper, there is usually some sort of signature bloodbath when Editor Lacey and Publisher Larkin begin to impose the cookie cutter New Times template. Thus, when the New Times bought the old SF Weekly years ago, Larkin and Larkin swarmed in, denounced the staff, and cleaned out the office as if they were cleaning out a waterfront saloon.

After buying the Voice chain, they neutered the Voice, did a neutering job on the Seattle Weekly, and are in the process of neutering the LA Weekly. The Lacey rule: the more liberal and activist the paper, the worse the bloodletting. Geov Parrish, former political columnist of the Seattle Weekly, reports on the Seattle situation in a letter that was posted on the LAObserved website. He notes that, among other things, "another wave of SF feces is in the process of hitting the fan here with (last week's pre-election) entirely fictional cover story (not identified as a parody) by the new managing editor, purportedly detailing a (nonexistent) business enterprise of the mayor."
Scroll down for the letter and the story. B3, still savoring the ascension of San Francisco
Values and Guardian editorial positions
Some advice from Seattle - About the changes in store at the LA Weekly...

Greg Nickels' Quiet Storm

To the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:

This morning I got an email from Carl Jensen, the founder of Project Censored at your nearby Sonoma State University, complaining that the Press Democrat published an "irresponsible page one article" about Project Censored and its annual Sonoma State Conference. He and Peter Phillips, the current director of the project, have asked for answers to the questions they have raised about your coverage.

As the editor and publisher of the alternative paper that has for years proudly run the Project Censored story, and then sent it out for publication in alternative papers throughout the country, I would appreciate your response to their charges of omission and commission as noted below. And I also have some questions. I am sending them via the Bruce blog at our website sfbg.com to the reporter, and the editors and publsher of the Post Democrat.

I have been astounded through the years that the Press Democrat has never to my knowledge written up this annual story. And then, this year, instead of running a fair story on a major local story by a major local university on its 30th anniversary, I was further astounded to find that you go on the attack mode and pick out one story and use it to lambaste the project on the front page of the Press Democrat. I find it particularly galling that, after censoring the story for three decades or so, you finally do the story on the project's 30th anniversary, a major journalistic and academic milestone. Bush. Real bush.

Some questions:

+Will you answer the questions raised by Jensen and Phillips in their notes to you? (Please send them also to me for publication in the Guardian and the Bruce blog.) Will you run the Phillips' answer in an op ed?

+Why have you never run this story through the years? (If you have, I would appreciate knowing about it and would love to see copies.)

+Why this year, instead of running a fair account of a nationally recognized project in journalism, did you center on just one story, which was number l8 on the list, and left out a flood of stories on important issues. (See the Guardian Censored package link below). In fact, in our coverage, we did not even go down this far on the list and concentrated on the top l0 stories, which ranged from number one ("The Feds and the media muddy the debate over internet freedom" to number ten ("Expanded air war in Iraq kills more civilians"). We did synopses and comments on the other stories and cited the source. Why didn't you at least do this and run a list of the stories, so people had a chance to judge the project for themselves, if you were going to do a hit attack and not a fair story? (We ran the entire list in our online package.) Why didn't you at least say this was the project's 30th anniversary and provide some history and context?

+Why didn't you get comments from any of the distinguished Censored judges through the years or from any of its many supporters, including Ben Bagdikian, author of "The Media Monopoly" and former dean of the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and Noam Chomsky, and Robert McChesney, a prominent media critic and author, and many many others. Or from any of the alternative press that regularly runs the Censored story as one of its most widely read and highly respected issues of the year?

+Each year, Censored runs l0 stories that it considers Junk Food News. Doesn't this story qualify as a top entry this year?

I would also appreciate it you would address the larger issue of "censorship" that this project, and many of us, try to address. As the only daily paper in the Bay Area not aligned with the emerging Singleton/Hearst regional monopoly, you have a special responsbility to report the news, not censor it and mangle as you do annually with this story.

This is particularly the case with the paper of Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, and the uncritical news stories and editorials that helped march us into Iraq and a deadly occupation. The "censored" Iraq stories, let me emphasize, were a major staple of Project Censored and the Guardian, and other alternative papers that ran Censored stories and took the anti-war side and condemned the preemptive invasion before and during the war and up to the present day.

Last impertinent question: has the Press Democrat/NY Times done a major local story on the impact of the Hearst/Singleton moves to destroy daily competition and impose regional monopoly in the
Bay Area (and the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto suit to break up the unholy alliance)? If not, why not? If not, when will you start doing this kind of major local story and stop doing attack stories on major local projects such as Project Censored? Have you run the major Hearst scandal story on prescription drug pricing (from the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and previous Bruce blogs). This is a story, let me emphasize, that Singleton papers are also censoring as yet another example of the Hearst/Singleton mutual benefit society. Until you do this Hearst/Singleton story and pursue it properly, until you run the major Hearst scandal story, until you start doing fair and balanced stories on major local projects such as Project Censored, you have no business criticizing anybody on much of anything involving media criticism. Thanks very much.

Dear Colleague:

On October 4, the Press Democrat published an irresponsible page one article about Project Censored and a conference it held at SSU. The article, written by Paul Payne, appeared to be set up to attack Project Censored. He interviewed two well-known critics of the project before the conference took place. They didn't even attend the conference to know what the speaker said.

In all my years in journalism, as a journalism professor, and as an advisor to the SSU STAR, Payne's hit-piece definitely was one of the least objective articles I have ever read.

In the weeks following, the Press Democrat published just two letters concerning the ethics of Payne's article leading readers to believe there was little public reaction. However, there were well over 100 comments submitted to the Press Democrat on line with the great majority castigating the PD.

Following is a letter Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored, wrote to Payne questioning his article Further, Phillips is submitting an op ed article to the PD this week, in hopes of letting the public know the truth about the conference and the speaker.

I thought you, as a journalist, should be aware of this unethical behavior by Payne and the Press Democrat.

Carl Jensen

Dear Paul Payne,

Staff Writer for the Press Democrat

October 6, 2007

Subject: There's that other theory on 9/11: SSU hosts discredited academic who says U.S. could have planned attack.? Page 1 October 4, 2006 Press Democrat

Were we at the same lecture last? Friday night?? Somehow you missed reporting? Dr. Jones'? first 45 minutes on the?collapse speeds of building 7 and the Twin towers, which where the principle physics questions? presented that evening.??

Did you? tape the lecture, because nowhere can we find Dr. Jones making a statement that the US Government did it? He was quite clear in saying he doesn't know who placed the thermite in the building,? if indeed that is what was used.

When you write that Jones' theories have been discredited/condemned by other scholars and critics as groundless,? it would be nice to actually cite who is making these charges.? If you look on the 9/11 Scholars for Truth website you will find the names of over 2 dozen structural engineers, physicists, chemists, and other scientists who support his work . That sounds to us like a valid scientific dispute not a total or even partial discrediting.?

When we discuss journalism at the University we clearly talk about objectivity and balance as the hallmark of solid reporting. So we are wondering how the effort by you to present both sides of the issues was missed? Obviously, the quotes from the two well-known enemies of Project Censored were obtained before you came to the lecture, but why weren't the numerous other professors present at the event or Project Censored people, or even Jones himself given the opportunity to respond to the critics???

The article was so one-sided and biased that we will be formally requesting to Pete Golis to provide space for a 700 word response sometime within the next two weeks.??

Disagreeing on scientific issues is one thing, slandering a visiting scholar is quite another.? I saw Dr. Jones' face when he read your article.? He didn't deserve such a mean-spirited slight. What a terrible thing to do to him personally.??

Dr. Jones spoke at the University of Colorado the? weekend before last and I have attached the Denver Post story for your review.? Perhaps this will assist you in understanding what balanced objectivity in news is about.

Peter Phillips

THERE'S THAT OTHER THEORY ON 9/11: SSU HOSTS DISCREDITED ACADEMIC WHO SAYS U.S. COULD HAVE PLANNED ATTACK

SFBG Project Censored

By Bruce B. Brugmann

The City Attorney and City Hall are lathered and steamed these days because of a barrage of public records requests from Kimo Crossman, a public records activist with few equals.

The principle seems to be: go after Kimo full bore but do not molest PG@E on its low franchise fee in perpetuity, the lowest in the state,or its private power monopoly that is illegal under public power mandates of the federal Raker Act and U.S. Supreme Court. So we offer some suggestions on how to deal with the new "sunshine" crisis.
For starters, Kimo has a good idea: create a publicly accessible database that gets automatic copies of every document created at City Hall (unless there's a damn good reason to mark it secret). That way the busiest of advocates can spend their time searching the files on their own, and the city's lawyers can do what they ought to be doing, fighting PG@E. B3

SFBG: The new sunshine "problem"

By Bruce B. Brugmann

SOS: The news in the media is grim and getting grimmer by the day. Journalists and journalism schools and journalism organizations have been much too passive in this time of great peril and need to start fighting back, particularly through their journalism organizations. The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists struck the right note at its splendid annual Excellence in Journalism awards dinner last Thursday night. Below, in our editorial for Wednesday's Guardian, are some of our ideas for action. We will be presenting more on a regular basis. Check our previous ideas in the Guardian and on the Bruce blog. Meanwhile, join SPJ, Media Alliance and FAIR, and follow the media news on the Romenesko media column at Poynter.org and ChainLinks.org, the newspaper union website of news alerts and stories in the land of ChainLinks.

And support the independent voices. And support the independent- minded journalists on the chain papers who risk their jobs to fight the forces of consolidation and chains-are-us journalism, mainstream and alternative.

Much more to come, send along your ideas, B3

SFBG: Journalists need to fight back

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist who appears on the Guardian website, wrote a chilling column this week
on how the "American media establishment has launched a major offensive against the option of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq."

He noted that the "heaviest firepower is now coming from the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA--the front page of the New York Times. The present situation is grimly instructive for anyone who might wonder how the Vietnam War could continue for years while opinion polls showed that most Americans were against it. Now, in the wake of midterms elections widely seen as a rebuke to the Iraq war, powerful media institutions are feverishly spinning against a pullout of U.S. troops."

Solomon cited a Nov. l5 front page piece by Michael Gordon under the headline "Get Out of Iraq Now? Not So Fast, Experts Say." Gordon then appeared hours later on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, "fully morphing into an unabashed pundit as he declared that withdrawal is 'simply not realistic,'" Solomon said.

"If a New York Times military-affairs reporter went on television to advocate for withdrawal of U.S. troops as unequivocally as Gordon advocated any such withdrawal during his Nov. l5 appearance on CNN, he or she would be quickly reprimanded--and probably would be taken off the beat by the Times hierarchy. But the paper's news department eagerly fosters reporting that internalizes and promotes the basic world views of the country's national security state."

Solomon's key point: "That's how and why the Times front page was so hospitable to the work of Judith Miller during the lead-up to the leadup to the invasion of Iraq. That's how and why the Times is now so hospitable to the work of Michael Gordon."

And so it is not surprising that the New York Times and its Santa Rosa daily have been so inhospitable through the years to Project Censored, housed nearby at Sonoma State University. (See my previous blog and the scathing criticism by founder Carl Jensen and current director Peter Phillips of PD/NYT coverage of the 30th anniversary project and conference.)

I asked Jensen about the PD and Times record of covering what ought to be a top annual local and national press story. "At first," Jensen said, "the PD merely ignored the Project. Then, after Newsweek ran a column about it, the PD was embarrassed into covering it. Which they did, using the annual results as an excuse to criticize me for being a liberal, left-wing agitator. Finally, they just started to run one story a year, or sometimes none, announcing the results. This year they didn't even bother to announce the results for the 30th anniversary of the project. Instead, they did Paul Payne's hit piece about Steve Jones. To my knowledge, and a Lexis-Nexis search, the New York Times has never run an article about the project."

The PD has also not answered my impertinent questions about their censor-or-mangle coverage, which I emailed to the reporter, editors, and publisher.

Let us remember that IF Stone, in his famous IF Stone's Weekly, exposed in l964 the Gulf of Tonkin scam only days after President Johnson used it as the excuse to expand U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And ever after he led the journalistic charge brilliantly against the war. It took years and tens of thousands of dead American soldiers for the New York Times (and the other big "liberal" papers, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post) to figure out that Stone was right and change their "we can't get out now" news and editorial policies in support of the war. If Project Censored had been going at that time, Stone and his powerful little four page publication would have had major stories on the Censored list every year.

My impertinent advice to the Post Democrat and the New York Times: if you are are going to run Jayson Blair and Judith Miller and Michael Gordon and Paul Payne, then you sure as hell ought to be giving serious regular coverage to Project Censored at Sonoma State University and its annual roster of major "censored" stories the New York Times, PD, and the mainstream press don't cover properly. Why not start by running Phillips' op ed piece and inviting Jensen, Phillips, and their Project Censored crew into the PD for a full editorial conference and a podcast question and answer session? B3

The new Iraq-war media offensive
How powerful institutions like The New York Times are feverishly spinning against a pullout of U.S. troops
BY NORMAN SOLOMON

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat/New York Times "censors" the annual Project Censored story. Why? Some impertinent questions for the Press Democrat by Bruce B. Brugmann

Alas. Alas. (B3, disheartened by the news)

Posted Tuesday, Nov. l7th, on the website of the Guardian of London

From Guardian Unlimited: News blog 12:15pm

Here at the Guardian we have long suspected it. But today comes official confirmation: George Bush doesn't read the Guardian often. During a press conference with the Australian PM, John Howard, in Hanoi today, Mr Bush was asked about the report in yesterday's Guardian that he was planning a final push in Iraq involving an additional 30,000 troops.

"Is that something...," began a reporter.

"Where was that report?" asked Mr Bush.

"In the Guardian newspaper," the journalist replied.

"Guardian newspaper? Well, I don't read that paper often. But I - look, I'm going to listen to our commanders, Steve. Ours is a condition-based strategy [...] So I'm not aware of the Guardian article."

Of course, the president may well have been thinking of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a publication which also takes a sceptical editorial line on his policies. Who knows? But in the unlikely event you're reading this, Mr President, Guardian Weekly has a four-week free trial on. Just say the word.

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Well, after checking page the Daily Digest on page 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle business section (where I sometimes find a spot of Hearst/Singleton news), I found the monopoly story of the day in an online Editor and Publisher story out of New York, sent via Chain Links, the online publication of the Newspaper Guild.

It was another jolly tip of the iceberg of what is happening to the chains that dominate the newspaper business. The head: "SF Chronicle to OUtsource All of its Printing." The lead: "NEW YORK: Hearst Corp. has signed a l5-year contract with Transcontinental to print the San Francisco Chronicle and its related products as well as provide post press services." Second paragraph: "Production is slated to start in spring 2009 in a new plant based in the San Francisco Bay Area." Third paragraph: "Transcontinental is a Montreal-based company that prints several newspaper in Canada like the Montreal daily La Presse a well as the New York Times for the Ontario and upstate New York markets?" Montreal? In Canada?

The terse six paragraph story yet again raises some key questions about the impacts of regional Hearst/Singleton monopoly: Wil the "competitive" Hearst and Singleton papers properly cover the story and its impacts for readers and advertisers and the public interest in the Bay Area?

For example, does this mean the end of union contracts for the pressmen? What does Hearst plan to do with its existing press equipment and press facilities? Fourth paragraph: "The new facililty is expected to surpass $l billion in total revenue over the l5-year period." One billion? And just why is that money suddenly going to a company in Montreal, Canada, at the same time that Hearst revenues are going to Hearst headquarters in New York? What's left for San Francisco?

There are already reports that Singleton (and other newspapers) are outsourcing advertising material to India. And there are reports amongst Singleton staffers that copy editing may be next. And then....City Hall reporting?
Again: Will Hearst and the "competitive" Singleton papers tell us what they are really up to? Or will it have to come from depositions and discovery in the Clint Reilly/Joe Alioto antitrust suit? We will do our best to follow the story at the Guardian and the Bruce blog. Meanwhile, I urge you to sign up for ChainLinks and follow the news from the Galloping Conglomerati. Some recent ChainLinks stories below: B3

'SF Chronicle' to Outsource All of Its Printing By E&P Staff

MediaNews profits up on acquisitions By Will Shanley
Denver Post Staff Writer

ChainLINKS. Scroll to the bottom of the website to join the e-mail list