The events in Illinois should make it clear how important strong newspapers – or their equivalent in the 21st Century - are to the health of a democracy.

I don’t pretend to have followed the demise of the Illinois governor in the past few years. But it seems from what I have read, heard, and seen on TV that the Chicago print reporters and editorial writers were on this guy relentlessly, and skillfully.

It’s instructive that, according to the federal criminal complaint brought against him, that the governor is alleged to have tried to shake down the Chicago Tribune. He wanted them to fire editorial writers as a quid pro quo to helping the Tribune Company.

What did the Tribune Company do? It’s not totally clear what the parent company executives did. But we do know this. The Chicago Tribune reporters and editorial writers were on the governor’s ass to the end. Even to the point where the U.S. Attorney had to go to the newspaper, and ask that they hold a story that the governor had been federally wire-tapped.

It was a true story. Had they printed it when they had it, it could have – apparently – jeopardized a major investigation. And the Chicago Tribune held off, for the good of the public.

I repeat: they held off for the good of the public, and to preserve the prosecution of a major public figure alleged to have corrupted government in ways that Hollywood could hardly have imagined.

What more evidence do you need to show the importance of major daily newspaper – or a major daily newspaper-type reporting operation - to the health of a free democracy?

It’s a bitter irony that the Chicago Tribune is going to bankruptcy even as it has proved how essential newspapers like it are to our system of government – actually, to our way of life.

It’s also instructive that the governor thought that he could shake down the Tribune because of its’ precarious financial situation. They didn’t go for it. But in the near future, some weakened so-called Watch Dogs of the press probably will in some locale. It could be happening right now in some not-so-small city in our country.

That, I believe, is what is at stake for our country in the demise of major newspapers. Our very democratic form of government.

We either have to save them, or create their equal in a new media world.

LAMBERT: Well, that's pretty much my reasoning for a "nationalized" press model. Let anyone who wants to publish go ahead and publish whatever they want. But get the serious, vital business of reporting away from advertiser and political pressures. Hence my BBC-style model for the US.

How about we start with a simple tax on tv sales - say one percent or so, and a similar tax on broadcast advertising - radio, tv and cable.

LAMBERT: I'd prefer something that insulates the business from fluctuating economic issues. A slowdown in TV buying means the usual cycle of feast and famine. A permanent fee -- a First Amendment Protection "Fee" -- allows for constant budgeting.

The car czar would oversee the multi-billions the automakers spend on measured media, the very life blood of local television, radio and newspapers.

(PS - Will "ClaudeNRick"(tm) be assessing Shiancoe this Sunday? I've heard they've been seen hanging around Winter Park).

LAMBERT: I can predict you better than you can predict you.

Regional Lehrer News Hours--I like it with maybe a touch more pep.

LAMBERT: An occasional joke wouldn't hurt.

I was just speculating about what would happen if "ClaudeNRick" (tm) wrote about "not seeing enough of that around (their) house(s)these days".

Or maybe Jeff Strickler saying the same about say, Eva Mendes, in a movie review.

Just what ARE the "journalistic standards" these days at the Strib?

Or is CJ getting a "cultural" pass?

Signed,

Concerned Parent

Lambo:

Your proposal would make for an excellent red meat, base-rousing issue for the right. To wit, check out the spittle-flecked comments from Bertram, Jr's peers trolling on MediaBistro:

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/radio/npr_layoffs_looming_102980.asp

LAMBERT: Its Pavlovian, isn't it?

I'm a working journalist, and the thought of employment with a government-funded service makes me cringe. It seems to me inherently not credible, even if it's completely on the up-and-up (which nothing ever is) because in this deeply divided political climate, there would be endless accusations of free rides and partisan attacks. In addition, it seems to me there's a fundamental conflict with the First Amendment -- if Congress can make no law affecting a free press, it can't statutorily set one up.

LAMBERT: Well, somehow the Brits have a version of this. But really, are we expecting the vaunted "free market" to resuscitate serious journalism? The commercial model spells ... shopper, with celebrity birthdays and fantasy football columns.

The memo we will NEVER see:

To: Tribune Company employees

From: Sam Zell

As you all know, we are facing a perfect storm in the newspaper business. The Internet has fragmented both audiences and advertising, and now the recession has driven advertisers under cover.

This is an unfortunate situation because we have a lot of debt here at the Tribune Company, and, as you know, it is YOUR debt, not mine. We bought this company by leveraging your pension plan. Nonetheless, I am committed to ensuring that the Tribune weather these economic storms.

To this end, I am announcing today that the Chicago Cubs are going to play two players short of a full payroll next year. I invested $118 million in the team last year, and they couldn’t get through the first round of the playoffs.

I can get a better return for my money by investing it in the newsrooms of our newspapers. In consultation with the Cubs management, I have decided to lay off two players, Henry Blanco and Derek Lee. Together, they made $16.4 million. I estimate that this money will pay the salaries of 234 journalists, roughly 23 additional people at each of our newspapers.

Blanco failed to get on base two-thirds of the time he batted, and I paid him $55,000 for every game he played. I paid Lee $85,500 for each game he played, and he drove in only 90 runs.

I expect these 234 journalists to be much more productive. In turn, I expect them to attract more readers, which will attract more advertisers. I am happy to support our journalism.

LAMBERT: Clearly, a notion waist deep in a sea of raving madness.

You're right, of course, about the publicly traded commercial model being all played out. I'm thinking the future lies in nonprofit status, maybe employee ownership. I hope enough people would see the value in subscribing to a Web-only publication, a la Minnpost.

LAMBERT: Non-profit offers no guarantee at all of consistent, much less regular funding, and creates one of the problems with the public radio model, which is forever courting corporate underwriting. Tough doing investigative work on your benefactors.

Why load this responsibility on PBS (and give all the BJs a cut n' paste GOP talking point response)?

Why not set up a new and separate vehicle, yet capitalize on existing programs that are in place. Because all you are proposing to me sounds like enhancing the media capabilities of the watchdog business, and who set up the greatest watchdog business in USA history (before he went ego-crazy) - Nader. (Notice how I deftly avoid the existing anti-Soros talking point.)

Hehehe...just wish I could see the face of all the BJs out there when they imagine Nader receiving secure and direct public funding to publicize government and big business abuses that he has been undercovering during his watchdogging his entire life...hehehe.

Dang, I'm going to dream sweetly tonight. Thanks Guys!

LAMBERT: I'm NOT laying this on PBS. PBS is constantly fighting off right-wing adversaries with their appropriations knives and cuddling up to GM, Exxon/Mobil etc. for underwriting.

Okay, last night I was frustrated (not even at BJ) and out of line, and so I want to apologize to all the BJs and especially to BL's one and only BJ for my gleeful post last night.

BL, you have been teetering on the brink of this next generation of news world for weeks, I've been telling you that it is here right in front of you, and you've correctly stated you can't see it.

That is because it is up to you to build it. Well, either you or if you do not, then some BJ who stumbles into it first...your call.

I have several ideas on it that I will gladly share with you. I'll be at Jay's Cafe at 5pm enjoying the highlight of my week, a quiet dinner with my girlfriend. But we normally sit at a table for four and you are welcome to those empty chairs if you would like to hear them. You have my contact information if you want to let me know you can make it, or just surprise me/us.

I could use a meaningful change of employment too.

LAMBERT: Thanks for the invite. I'll take a rain check. I've got maintenance duties up north tomorrow.

I heard on MPR that the Chicago Tribune is still making money, but not enough to pay off Zell's financial lunacy. When the strib started flirting with various and sundry financial geniuses, the reports were that papers in general were making profits that the average supermarket owner would sell his mother into prostitution for, but were not enough for the financial vampires. To the extent we can get information, newspapers as businesses still seem often to make a profit. The Detroit Free Press is in the toilet, but every other paper in the Gannett chain is making a profit, some of them huge as at Green Bay.

Still, the arc is downwards, and a BBC type of organization is worth thinking about; I heard someone suggest a WPA Writers' Project sort of idea. Besides hunting weasels another thing news hounds could do is something like what the strib did back when it was a paper. When the Clintons were trying to make the health system a little saner, the strib set up a huge project, headed as I recall by Eric Black, which convened groups of citizens' panels all over the state and gave each of them time and access to expertise to mull over the various ways of organizing health care and then report back. There is room for something somewhere between what the better magazines and what NPR and PBS so: Gather people who know what they're talking about to discuss a subject sanely and lay out options in a short time, though not instantly.

You're looking for an editor? Good luck. By editor I understand three types: (1) someone with a huge expense account who bribes second tier celebrities and picturesque criminals to put their names of the front of books actually written by some poor literate for a few hundred dollars; (2) someone who asks a writer, "Do you have any facts to back up that assertions, when you say 'some people' can you name one and get him to say so on record?"; (3) somebody who gets pronouns to agree with antecedents, turns passive constructions into active and otherwise serves the cause of literacy. Since Joe the plumber has a book deal, I assume type one still exists, but from what I read, I'd say the other two are like farriers--existing only on a roster held by the Smithsonian and to be brought out for national folklife exhibitions.

LAMBERT: I'm laughing. It's a mordant laugh, but I'm laughing. A veteran Strib sales person told me the other day that he believed the paper is still turning a profit, "Probably in the low single digits, but a profit," which is to say a sustainable proposition if it weren't for a colossal debt load inspired by expectations of spinning Strib revenues into the Wall St. casino, and generating colossal profits, few if any would have been used to enhance the star Tribune. If there is any upside at all to the catastrophe unfolding around us it is that we MAY ... may, I say ... place some kind of restored value on the old business model which said you placed X-percent of profits back into improving the goods and services you were manufacturing. As this latest gilded age collapses, even the most hardened free marketeer has to be seeing the recklessness of kiting checks back and forth just to run up "paper value" while depleting the original product.

Oh, and on the editing thing. Don't get me started. Ripping editors is the surest way to earn deaf ears from everyone in range. But I challenge anyone still working at second and third tier daily newspapers to convince me that editors today haven't been selected for their willingness to accept corporate groupthink and insist on it from their reporters and columnists.

One other possible good thing about the newspaper collapse is that it may put the blocks to theory in papers from the NYTimes to the strib that the problem is that the liberal media has offended conservatives so that if the paper was just stuffed with conservative hacks, then conservatives would buy the paper and its financial butt would be saved. Maybe by now the Times will have figured out that printing Brooks, Kristol, etc. has not improved the bottom line and the strib that printing the same along with Saunders, Krauthammer and Will almost exclusively on the op-ed page is not the path to solvency.

My local paper is the Fargo Forum, so I grasp the comments on editors. On the matter of substance, certainly group think is a problem, but in this respect they are just imitating their much better paid peers in t.v. punditry. What really amazes me is that in an age where every grade-schooler has figured out spell-check, how can ordinary spelling errors turn up in a paper"? I expect failures to distinguish between, to/two/too or there/they're/their, but how does a garden variety misspelling end up on the page even if, as is the Forum's case, it is put together in the middle of night by interns?

LAMBERT: As someone who utterly dependent on copy editing/proofreading, I have no basis for comment here ... other than I'm not certain either writing or spelling is a criteria for an editing job.

Sort of turns the concept of "Free Press" on its head, does it not?

The failure of newspapers in most instances is the failure of big city newspapers to adapt to the fact that the fundamental financial underpinnings of their business eroded, and rapidly. It's not the fact that the newspapers themselves are suffering operating losses (some are- tell me how the San Francisco Chronicle, at the heart of the Dotcom boom of the 90s-early 00s, continually lost money).

It seems to me that once the founding families of these papers sold the papers or took them public, two things happened: the papers suddenly had greater pressure to turn out consistent quarter-by-quarter profits, and they became much, much duller.

The next step was that, whatever the reason, these highly profitable papers then were sold again, in highly-leveraged deals. When Knight-Ridder was forced to sell, I'd surmise that virtually all of their papers were still profitable. Indeed, the STRIB and apparently the SPPP are still profitable, if you don't worry about pesky things like debt service.

I also blame Nixon. I'm wildly generalizing here, but, pre-Watergate, journalism wasn't held in especially high regard. The caricature was that you had hard-bitten, hard-drinking hacks cranking out stories, getting by until they could get their book published
Suddenly, after Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein weren't Woodward and Bernstein, they were Redford and Hoffman, and Journalism became cool. Not only that, a calling. It certainly swelled the enrollment of Journalism school.

Are the papers any better? They're certainly less lively.
Remember, Brian, in a previous entry you believe that there is still an audience for a Primetime news hour. How many years has there been erosion in the circulation of virtually any major daily?

Yes, bigtime dailies serve an important role. Yes, we need to have vibrant newspapers in this town. The Strib did an excellent job providing solid coverage of the bridge collapse. Most of the time, however (as a longtime subscriber, and, for quite a while, a subscriber of both papers until the SPPP dropped delivery in my area), the content is weak and uninspired.

Brian Tierney, the guy who bought the Philly paper, suggested that the business side had really let the operation down. When you're accustomed to monopoly profits, it's easy to grow self-satisfied and less likely to innovate.

Naturally, in their quest to stop the bleeding, the papers are hacking and slashing. With each cut, however, they're making themselves that less compelling and less relevant.

As far as your newspaper preservation plan, I don't think that the answer is to turn the staffs of local dailies into civil service bureaucrats. Any time you have the government instituting a major program, you inherently have another bureaucracy, one inevitably rife with financial issues of its own.

No thanks. I think that we'll see some more thinning of the herd in the short term, which is terrible for those affected. Ultimately new vehicles will be established, and may or may not succeed. Some may thrive. We may not see the same depth and breadth of the late 20th Century newspaper, but it might be interesting to see what does take shape.

LAMBERT: Well, as I say the BBC is one big lumbering entity, but it does work and does produce -- I like the word "assure" -- quality news gathering. The Big Brother aspect is hardly appetizing, but good God, can the commercial model be, uh, "less worse"?

Bottom line: accurate information about relevant topics is vital to a vibrant, transparent culture. How do we "assure" that?

Does CJ really matter very much? Does what she writes rise to the level of cultural consternation, intrigue, and accusations based on the color of her skin?

She's a gossip columnist, people, and they walk in a world no one else exists inside. I don't care if you're gatecrasher Ben Widdicombe, intelligencer Lloyd Grove, defamation seeking Jared Paul Stern, or Liz Smith, you've got your exemplary status assured and it has been this way for decade upon decade in print.

But why not make a big foo-king racial question out of it if you have such a petty-mind and little else to do with you're time. This small minded obsession has little basis in the rational world but if you're a dork, you're just a dork.

"Richard", or can I call you Dick, your XL T-shirt is in the mail.

The one with:

"Impressive. Since I don't see nearly enough of that around my house these days, I didn't mind at all."

...on the front.

Merry CHRISTmas!

Bertram Jr.

And, let's say, you're the editor of the major metro daily in the 15th largest market and this is the "product" you are putting out while headed towards a bankruptcy filing?

What does that make one, "Dick"?

Just asking.

I'm sorry, Brian, but I think that your premise is faulty. The Brits have based their funding model on the premise that the airwaves belong to the public, and program accordingly. What's the analog with your nationalized press model?

Yes, there are a number of newspapers in financial distress today. What's new? Heck, most of the economy is in distress today. Separating the human element (i.e., the real prospect of lots of well-meaning, dedicated people facing an industry headed for extinction) from the essential problem, why is the reflexive answer simply for the taxpayers to subsidize more Nick Coleman and Katherine Kersten, or, for that matter, Sid or Reusse?

There are fewer barriers to entry in the news business than there have been for years: Any knucklehead with a computer (or a press) can set up a news operation. Your plan obscures the fact that most of the problems are the papers' own making. In the meantime, other operations have sprung up to fill a niche or need not met by the local papers.

I think that you also tend to glorify and overstate the prominence of muckraking or investigative reportage. Certainly it's important. I think that occurs far less frequent than you imagine. I also think that you overstate the press' hand in Governor Pay-for-Play in Illinois. I mean, so what if the Tribune editorialized against him? Far too often, "reporting" consists of showing up at news conferences. You also inflate the value of Coleman's screeds.
This isn't a rant against "liberal media bias", which I find as tedious as it is fruitless. If you dislike the political bent of your local rag, start your own.
Nonetheless, is Coleman a voice that should have a place in a modern day newspaper? Probably. Is it a grievous blow against the Body Politic? Unlikely. I think he isn't much of a factor either way.

Why the taxpayers should have to fund an operation that is failing because it has failed to serve either its readership or advertisers remains a mystery to me.

LAMBERT: It is way too easy to underestimate the resources required to actually report news. As I said in the original post, you can leave sports and celebrity foo-foo to "the internets". Maybe even political punditry. But you can't rely on bloggers to root out billing scandals at some giant HMO, or the next Wall St. fraud. You need something with sufficient mass to have impact, and professional reporters asking questions and putting on the squeeze. That's what shakes information out of the trees. I'm suggesting assuring the fundamentals of reporting -- in a way that separates it from the investor mentality and boom/bust economic cycles.

Everything comes down to either homosexual or blacks for you doesn't it Bjr? Your obsessed. All the problems in the world, no matter how macro or micro can be reduced to racial or sexual politics... it's clear from all your ranting and raving, finger-pointing, and bigotry. Get a life.

Well, judging by your neighbors in the internets, you are nothing if not topical--
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-cohen/meet-the-man-trying-to-ch_b_151232.html
http://therealnews.com/t/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/business/media/15carr.html
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/12/22/081222ta_talk_surowiecki
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucgg/20081216/cm_ucgg/publicownershipistruecauseofnewspapersdecline
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081216_boyarsky_dec_17_column/

But if you are ready to go beyond the Blogosphere Talking Points, cash in that rain check. ;)

LAMBERT: How much cash?

Cash, yes in fact I do have cash. Even better, I have none of this--

Any guess when the Strib might print this op-ed?

LAMBERT: Ted Rall! Always good stuff. (I recommend the link above.) Leveraged Buy-Outs (think Star Tribune) are the topic.

Gotta love these graphs ...

"Generally speaking, LBOs succeed under two conditions: an expanding economy and a management team able to radically increase profits in a short time. These conditions are rarely present at the same time, and almost never for very long.

"Signs that the LBO model was untenable began appearing 20 years ago, when two of corporate raider Robert Campeau's victims, the Revco drugstore chain and Federated Department Stores, went bankrupt. Federated, which employed thousands of American workers before Campeau came along, had been saddled with LBO debt equal to 97 percent of its net assets.

"LBO transactions have since led to scores of bankruptcies and hundreds of thousands of Americans losing their jobs--all to line the pockets of a tiny cabal of greedy speculators. The LBO goons' latest victims, ironically enough, are the media giants lionized by their own business reporters in breathless puff pieces."

Chance the Strib would run this... zero.

BL = "Chance the Strib would run this... zero."

Which brings you back to your original premise...that the USA in general and Mpls-StP in general NEEDS a media outlet that will print this highly topical LBO op-ed.

Ted Rall, via Yahoo on the internet...Is that enough of a kickstart into people's minds? And now it is in the comment thread of BL's fair blog...is that enough?

The Strib will not raise this issue, will Bob Collins over at MPR now see this and dare to bring up for discussion the evil that is the LBO? And if so, would that be enough for any politician discuss this without further media attention...and so, who else will?

Because LBOs (and its little sister, the leveraged merger) have undermined virtually every major MN-based corporation that ever existed in our fair state--I would dare say it touches a very locally important topic. Yet, while one would think our locally-based media would now be piling on top of each other to cover this until each person in the state would be able to discuss in at least a 30,000 foot level the pros and cons of LBOs. Why aren't they? Isn't it compassionately conservative enough? Not enough change? Can't find the hope angle?

People like to blame unions for corporations becoming unprofitable, well I call bullshit and counterblame corporate managers using LBOs to buy everything in sight, none of which they are prepared to lead (other than into the ground). And where are these smart bankers who granted these financial idiots the wherewithal to leverage these buyouts?

Kinda like Obama said about war--I'm not against banks or corporations buying/mergering...I'm just against the stupid ones. And if you can't figure out which ones are the stupid ones, then you should use the Buffett rule--if you can't figure out what they are telling you, then why are you thinking of giving them your money?

LAMBERT: Like a lot of people I spent a good chunk of the last 10-15 years thinking I was really out of it. I don't have the money to play the LBO game, or the hedge fund game, or the CDO game. But that didn't stop me from wondering ... a lot ... about how so much could be built on so little. Twenty times earnings? Really? I'm so old school I assume that you invest in companies that, you know, make things. They sell those things and you make money. How totally whacked, I know.