So Clear Channel, once reviled as The Evil Empire by people like me—before and after I worked for it (while there, my term of endearment was, "big ugly company")—has fired Dan "The Geezer" Donovan and 589 others around the country in its latest spasm of carp-flop death throes. News for KTLK, the so-called "News Talk" station, will now come entirely from KOA in Denver, just as so much of the, uh, music pumped out to Clear Channel's provincial stations comes from tiny little one-man studios in places such as Minneapolis.

KOOL 108 will go totally robot—no quipping between blasts of nostalgia—and along with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, Twin Cities listeners will almost certainly be hearing more of "high-quality national acts," such as Ryan Seacrest via the flopping empire's Premium Choice syndication package.

Do you like shamelessly lame corporate jargon? How about this Clear Channel home office description of what comes next as its stock price slides below a buck a pop—technically already a "penny stock"—" ... a multi-point plan to raise the bar for radio programming across all dayparts and platforms, including online and mobile.”

"To raise the bar . . . ." From what? Something a blind mole could get over? 

The similarities to what has the Star Tribune and other big papers in bankruptcy are stark, to say the least. The big boys bet—preferably with someone else's money—that the valuation ratios would keep climbing . . . ten-times billing, fifteen-times billing, twenty-times billing. Now, having ignored the impact of digital technology (iPod) and the broadening appeal of taste fragmentation (news/info and music via the Internet), the tent has collapsed.

As the Bushies used to like to say, "Who could have anticipated . . . ?"

OK, it hasn't completely collapsed, like, say, The Hindenberg. Jason Lewis—a local act—rose to number one in the 25 to 54 afternoon Arbitron ratings just released, a clear indication that there is still at least one salary to be covered by tea bagging and Obama-bashing. But Clear Channel's bet—like newspapers—was that the public revered constancy, that is to say the same product looking and sounding pretty much as it always has, no matter how many million MP3 players and websites were being bought and created.

The enormous debt loads required—to deliver huge profits to the major players moving from private to public (and in Clear Channel's case) back to private—meant every traditional element of every traditional format had to stay precisely as it was, with the only variable being the number of people required to produce it.

If any Clear Channel executive wants to explain the cost/benefit logic of canning Dan Donovan, I'm all ears. My eyes glaze at the thought of listening to Golden Oldies. But if you do have an audience that laps up nostalgia, give it to me straight, are you seeing research somewhere that says that same nostalgia-loving audience is not as interested in the era-appropriate humor of a jock they remember from way back when . . . as they are in the musty old tunes? Or, put another way, how much is a mega-conglomerate really saving by whacking Donovan or any of these people?

I must also say a kind word about Dan Barreiro's producer/sidekick, Joe Anderson, AKA "Mr. Phun." Barreiro is a quality act. But he and everyone who thinks two seconds about radio knows how much Anderson meant to the sound of that show.

Anyway . . . it really is kind of hopeless. Mass media is an endangered species. (What? You want  tele-type sound effects for news flashes like that?) But the irony is the inability of these mastodon-size debt beasts to serve any number of potentially valuable niche audiences, people looking for broadcast formats beyond . . . classic rock; pop country; golden oldies; tea bag talk; and half-assed, mailed-in news.

I only mention restoring The Fairness Doctrine these days to annoy my paranoid right-wing friends—you know, the ones hoarding guns and bottled water for when Obama sends them to FEMA camps and turns us into Sweden with baseball. But with Clear Channel, Citadel (KQRS's parent), and CBS Radio at low ebb, now might be a good time to put the squeeze on the industry—or at least the next generation of owners, as the barons who oversaw the collapse slink away with their winnings—for legitimate, verifiable "localism."

Empires such as Clear Channel and the bazillion "Christian" broadcasters are terrified of true "localism" because it impedes their one-stop profit-taking with syndicated acts such as Limbaugh, Hannity, and the vast chorus of wing-nut preachers.

I frankly don't get the appeal or need for music radio at all anymore. Seriously, who needs it? If it all vanished tomorrow, it'd take even the dimmest Luddite ten minutes to adapt.

But that's just me.

There is still life though in broadcast news/talk, assuming the sellers clean up and modernize their products, which means adjusting with the era and the culture and testing formats they haven't been able to play with under the weight of the casino debt that has now crushed them.   

In the interest of "letting it go" and giving credit where credit is due, let me briefly note the Minnesota Poll(s) produced by the Strib throughout the past two days, particularly Sunday's poll, which waded into the Norm Coleman drama.

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This one is about as incestuous as it gets. But before I get to all the disclaimers, I have to say I was pulling rotted fascia boards off a shack yesterday while the kerfuffle over KMSP Fox9 was exploding, at least among a tight crew of media colleagues, counterparts, and competitors. In other words, to quote Woody Allen, "I was nowhere near Oakland."

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I hope Barack Obama isn't wasting as much of his day with commercial news as I am, but the juvenile compulsions of America's news-for-profit industry has to be on his mind as he finesses his way through demands for special prosecutors and trials of former Bush administrators over what is so clearly torture. You could see him picking his way through the minefield today in his five-minute answer to a question about prosecutions in the Oval Office with the King of Jordan sitting by, like a potted plant.

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Apparently cartoonist Steve Sack is the only one in the Strib's Op-Ed department capable of weighing, condensing, and expressing the mood of the public in the matter of Norm Coleman v. Logic and Common Sense. Coleman made The Grand Tour of editorial boards last week, hoping, I guess, that his charm would do what no amount of legal talent has so far accomplished. (Or maybe I should say "lack of legal talent," based on the way I hear local law birds bashing Team Coleman's hapless court presentations to date).

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I have pet peeves and obsessions. I'm not trying to hide them. One—maybe you've noticed—is the way professional journalists, in effect, distort an event or issue by insisting on "balance," as though everything ideological always has at least two intellectually and morally equivalent sides.

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Perhaps you've heard of the hapless Denver TV executive who, in a spasm of misbegotten hipness, re-branded his station "The Deuce" without bothering to consult The Urban Dictionary . . . or, I'm guessing, listen to anyone who had. Presented with the street-reality definition of "the deuce," the GM—yet another balding white guy running a teenage girl-targeted CW affiliate—insisted he couldn't care less. He was, like, down with it, dude.

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Several issues are ricocheting around in my alleged brain this morning.

A: I don't envy Pat Doyle. The Star Tribune's recount guy has produced for today's paper what walks and talks a lot like the same story he and other Strib reporters have been writing for weeks. This isn't a knock on Doyle, who plugs in all the usual suspects—Larry Jacobs, etc.—saying pretty much what they always do. Will Coleman go beyond the State Supremes? Will Pawlenty sign a certificate? Do the U.S. Supremes have any interest in this case?

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Other than the usual suspects who see the hand of V. I. Lenin in everything the Star Tribune publishes, from the cop shop beat to the Vikings, everyone wants the Strib to survive. Hell, even Scott Johnson professed his conditional support for a newspaper in Minneapolis -- as long as it promises to regularly associate Cong. Keith Ellison with Louis Farrakhan, the international muslim terrorist conspiracy and repudiates agenda-based reporting.

The nascent "Save the Strib" movement, organized by Strib employees with an entirely understandable personal interest in the paper, has attracted 1700 signees on its Facebook page. Last week it produced a slick video featuring testimonials from the two mayors and other local cultural icons (Louie Nanne, Robyne Robinson, Lou Bellamy, etc.) Everyone professed their love for newspapers. Mayor Coleman even noted his affection for big city columnists ... without directly mentioning his bumptious older brother, Nick, who was just given the bum's rush out of his columnizing job.

So great, we all love the paper with our coffee in the morning, but that isn't going to get anyone anywhere until even the people who want to be saved start engaging in some very unpleasant realpolitik.

Maybe I should do this with always popular bullet points:

*  Any "saved" newspaper, in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Boston or anywhere is going to be a much smaller critter than it is today. Staffs of 130 reporters, photographers, editors are going to have to be reduced by two-thirds, if not more. This is inevitable.

*  Why? Because as we know the advertising model has been broken by the internet and there is no imaginable way to re-coalesce all that revenue (evenn if car dealers had money to advertise) back under one roof in a way that supports a 600-person payroll (counting everyone involved in a big paper's production and delivery). Think wishfully all you want about goosing internet advertising, but that once glistening, healthy horse has left the barn, crossed the river and the county and is running free in the foothills, never to return.

* So ... while bankruptcy courts mull, and some big-ego, deep pocket citizens perhaps consider bottom-feeding the "brand" after the apocalypse-by-debt, those who want to practice a semblance of institutional journalism might want to get serious about asking, "What are the absolutely essential qualities of something we could justifiably call a 'newspaper'?" What beats? How many people? I've been asking this for months and reading all sorts of beard-stroking forums and have yet to hear anyone with a pedigree risk a scenario.

* One reason ... again, I suspect ... is that if those "most read" and "most e-mailed" boxes on every newspaper website mean anything, the most financially remunerative coverage isn't the straight, earnest stuff traditionalists regard as journalistic grail.

* Pretty obviously every big city paper wants to barricade its "primary" content behind a subscription wall, like The Wall St. Journal. Ideally, there would be a secret signal to set this off, a man pumping an umbrella next to the motorcade route, and everyone everywhere in the country would announce it the same day. But no one seems to know what to charge for this -- Standard paper subscription rates? Twenty five cents a story? -- and most I suspect worry that their product as it currently exists wouldn't command much if anything on the paying market. And that would be a lot of insult added to injury.

By now most wonks have read the on-line forum between newspaper silverbacks like ex-Strib editor, Tim McGuire, ex-PiPress managing editor Ken Doctor, "Newsosaur" Alan Mutter , etc.

You can slice stuff like this a thousand different ways, but let me toss out a few excerpts and let you imagine the reality of what these rabbis are getting at, whether they realize it or not.

McGuire: "Everything a print source does must “add value.” Even weather and sports must be presented in ways that distinguish the information from commodity sources."

Charlotte Hall (Orlando Sentinel): "Readers want perceptive and analytical coverage of national and international news, plus advertisers love it, so the A-section stays. Local news, commentary and interactivity with readers are our franchise, so the news reports, the columnists, the editorial page, the letters to the editor and other interactive commentary are our core. Sports [remains and] focuses on opinion, enterprise and analysis.

Alan Jacobson (CEO newspaper design firm): "For 20 years, I’ve been saying that cosmetic redesigns are a waste of time and money. Here’s what needs to be done: Change the editing to include content that is compelling, relevant, interesting and useful to readers—and eliminate everything else.

Hall: "It stops the clock once a day and takes an assessment, offering the kind of in-depth and analytical work that the 24/7 breaking news world on the Web cannot provide. Print is good at the things the Web is not good at—watchdog, explanatory, enterprise, narrative storytelling. The two media complement one another. One is the flowing river, changing constantly; the other is the rock on the shore, fixed and solid."

Mario Garcia (CEO newspaper design firm): "In some communities, the core printed product will not be around in two, five or 10 years. In others, it will publish less often, as [only] Friday and Sunday, for example. The daily ones will be compact formats, some even the A4 format, already popular in many countries in Europe. They will be inspired by magazines and books, and less by traditional daily fare."

Hall: "Editors need a vision of how to differentiate their product from the Web but also make it as exciting and new as digital media. Visuals get you part of the way there. A new approach to writing and storytelling can get you the rest of the way."

Hall: "Change is rapid and continuous. It would be foolish to try to predict even two years out in our business. Liveliness, emotion and depth will be the key attributes in the next few years for print."

Then, for the hell of it, patch that together with the launch of True/Slant, an on-line publication built around a non-staff cadre of "knowledge experts". WSJ's Walt Mossberg offered his take on the basic concept:

True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.

It is launching with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These "headline grabs" link back to the originating outside site.

The revenue model is supposed to work like this:

The journalists are paid a small amount, but the plan is to turn them into minipublishers under the True/Slant umbrella. They will be offered a share of the advertising and sponsorship revenues their individual pages generate and, in some cases, equity in True/Slant, which is backed by venture capital.

These contributors are allowed to keep writing elsewhere, either online or in traditional media, and even to promote these outside efforts on True/Slant. But they are expected to post original commentary and analysis to True/Slant. They also are allowed to arrange for their own advertising or sponsorships, in addition to what True/Slant can sell, and even, in some cases, to add other authors to their pages.

In another unusual move, the contributors also are required to actively engage with readers on the site. They must post a minimum number of comments in reader discussions about their articles and curate the comments, giving prominence to the most interesting. They are even expected to comment on each other's posts.

And ..

This required engagement is an attempt to capture some of the excitement of a social network, and it ties in directly with a contributor's success. On the home page, and elsewhere throughout the site, True/Slant promotes not only the most popular contributors, but also the most active ones. High rankings in these categories can lead to higher traffic on each contributor's page, and, indirectly, to higher income.

Readers who are active commenters can also gain prominence on the site, especially if those comments are popular or called out for special attention. A front-page panel will highlight the most active commenters, and the most called-out comments.

I believe the description you're looking for is "glorified free-lance".

But the notions of "livelier", "more emotional" "magazine-style" writing from "experts" on certain topics, plus cultivated interactivity with the public, plus a cut of the (modest) revenue stream as incentive to produce verifiably engaging material sounds considerably more real and practical than dreamily hoping to rescue a 600-limbed dinosaur mired in the tarpits of debt and lifeless prose.

Instead, try imagining an on-line only "paper" with a core of maybe as few as 20 glamour-less beat reporters, working schools, city government, etc. buttressed by this contract crowd of "experts" working essentially on an interactivity-based commission, but maintaining a buzz around the central hive.

 

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I was surprised and saddened to hear that Steve Cannon died last night. I had heard he was ill but not that he was at death's door. I got to know Steve as his radio career was winding down. We talked on the phone a couple times a week for a few years. I played a round of golf with him and visited him down in Naples (which included a memorable dinner with Steve and Howard Viken).

 

 

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Henry Luce, the legendary publisher of TIME-Life, might be spinning in his grave at the cover story in this week's issue of his news magazine. "The End of Excess: Is this Crisis Good for America?", written by former Spy magazine editor Kurt Andersen, reads like the sort of loony lefty bulls*t (as Luce likely would have called it), that the TIME of old would have assigned to its most retrograde columnist for a thorough trashing.

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Conventional wisdom says that Norm Coleman will not rethink his determination when--not if--the "counting" of the last 400 ballots goes down next week and he is formally, officially, completely . . . but still not finally . . . declared the loser in last year's election.

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