Former Rocky reporter Ed Sealover started today at the Denver Business Journal.
Sealover was hired just about the time that things started going seriously down hill for the Rocky.
It’s good news he’s found a job. If only more Rocky reporters could.
Gov. Ritter is signing the so-called FASTER legislation into law today, after it cleared the state legislature last week. I wrote about this legislation in my final Rocky column. You’re excused for missing it, because the Rocky closed the day before my column was scheduled to run. It’s a low blow for me to be criticizing the Rocky’s coverage of the state legislature after the paper has died, but in some ways maybe you’ll find it refreshing. The final edition of the Rocky was such a love fest, it almost killed me. I mean, I enjoyed it, but you’d think a journalistic organ like the Rocky would have been a tiny bit more critical of itself.
In any case, below is my faster column that never ran. Fortunately, it criticizes the Post as well, and it’s relevant to state legislature coverage going forward.
If you’ve following the state legislature in the dailies, you know that both Republicans and Democrats have been telling reporters they want to fix roads and bridges in Colorado.
The we-want-to-do-something theme comes across clearly, even if you read a fraction of the articles.
So you’d expect journalists to tell us how much each side proposed to spend on roads and bridges and where they planned to get the money.
Well, I just finished reading all the stories about highway funding in the dailies this year, and the coverage answered those two questions, at least regarding the Democrats’ proposal.
But I’m left with only the vaguest notions about how much the Republicans were proposing to spend, and where they were going to get the money.
In 15 of 16 articles, reporters wrote that Democrats wanted to spend between $200 and $265 million per year, depending on the article, and they’d get this money by raising average vehicle registration fees to $41 and adding $2 to rental car fees.
But only two of the 16 articles provided a specific figure for the amount Republicans wanted to spend, $82 million under one proposal and $125 million under another. Even these figures were vague. The latter, published in the Feb. 5 Rocky Mountain News, was described as consisting of a $15 vehicle fee, “redirection” of the existing state budget, and severance-tax money.
Instead of providing specifics, reporters wrote, in five articles, about the Republicans’ broad ideas to generate more transportation money.
For example, a Rocky article Jan. 15 stated that Republicans wanted to leverage the “value of state buildings and sell bonds,” without offering a figure for how much this could raise.
But the Rocky found space in the piece to quote Republican House Minority Leader Mike May saying, “The Republican plan is: Building roads, not bureaucracies.”
Similarly, four articles stated that Republicans wanted to reallocate existing money in the state budget to transportation, but not a single story told us what they’d cut to free up the funds.
Reporters should have given us more specifics about the Republican proposals.
And here’s the key point: if Republicans couldn’t come up with specific funding sources and costs for their road proposals, then reporters should have informed us, repeatedly if necessary, that Republicans were not able to provide this specific information.
Reporters also should have told us more often how much money Colorado highways actually need. Only three stories did this, reminding readers that a governor’s commission estimated that Colorado highways require $500 million – $1.5 billion per year, well above the Democrats’ proposal and way higher than the Republican’s vague proposals.
Reporters should have reported whether the leaders of both parties, particularly the Republicans, think they’ve provided for basic public safety with their highway proposals. I didn’t see this addressed at all, even though the costs of repairing Colorado’s roads is so much higher than the figures debated at the Capitol.
The transportation bill has cleared both the Colorado House and Senate, and Gov. Ritter is expected to sign it. So its day in the sun is gone.
But with the state budget as tight as it is, you can count on seeing similar debates in the future over how to fund popular programs.
Reporters should insist, repeatedly if necessary, that politicians who claim to support something, like transportation upgrades, be specific about 1) how much they want to spend, 2) where they’ll get the money, and 3) whether their proposals are will actually do the job.
And their answers, or lack thereof, should be included in any article where a funding proposal is tossed around.
How classy of E.W. Scripps to give the Rocky an extra day to publish a last edition.
Scripps could have shut down the paper yesterday and saved a little money. After all, if the 150-year old newspaper had been printed for, say, a week longer, to give itself and its readers time to reflect about journalism and their community, think of all the money Scripps would have lost. Anyway, the point is, the Rocky is a business, and that’s the way it is. But unlike other outfits, its death leaves an information gap that’s widening as other news outlets cut back too.
It’s a blow for coverage of the day-to-day stuff of our community, especially our local government. There are still lots of sources of national news, but local news is in serious decline.
So, as a condolence gift for the Rocky’s death, don’t send flowers to Editor John Temple or Mike Littwin or Vince Carroll.
Do something to support a Denver news outlet that actually gathers local news, not just aggregates it or opines about it.
Donate to nonprofit news outlets that are still covering our local community: This means nonprofits like: Colorado Public Radio; community radio station KGNU (1390 AM); online news outlets ColoradoIndependent.com and (sort of) FaceTheState.org; and public television stations KBDI (Channel 12) and Rocky Mountain PBS (Channel 6). Read Westword and even the Denver Daily News. Try out the Colorado Statesman or the Denver Business Journal.
Complement Denver’s local TV news shows and KOA when they air good local journalism, which thank god they still do.
But most important, subscribe to the Denver Post. And buy a subscription for a friend. There’s no better way to support local journalism. It’s actually a great cause, even if the Post’s owner, MediaNews, is no less greedy than E.W. Scripps.
Anyway, to mark the death of the Rocky, do something to support local news reporting.
Remember in early Feb., a letter leaked from the Denver Newspaper Agency pinpointed the death of the Rocky Mountain News as occuring on March 1, 2009.
The letter drafted for Rocky and Post advertisers stated, “Effective March 1, 2009, only one major daily newspaper will serve the metro Denver market — The Denver Post.” The DNA letter even had a new DNA logo, without the Rocky on it.
A DNA spokesperson said the March 1 date was just a “placeholder,” and the letter was drafted for contingency planning only.
Today, you have to wonder, with rumors of Scripps execs in town and Dean Singleton scheduled for Peter Boyles’ show tomorrow morning.
I bumped into Jon Caldara at his stimulating anti-stimulus rally last week. I asked him if his pig reminded him of anyone. He said it reminded him of himself, with more hair.
He wasn’t so good humored later when he seemed to think it was a giant scandal that I’ve worked for Progress Now Action.
Later on his radio show (spotlighted by Colorado Media Matters), Caldara accused me of being an activist like him. Can you believe it?
How could I write a freelance media-criticism column for the Rocky and be an activist at the same time, he wanted to know. The same way he’s a talk show host and an activist. The same way his employee Dave Kopel is an activist (paid by Caldara’s own activist group, the Independence Institute) and is also a media commentator for the Rocky.
I think I’m beginning to understand why all these conservative talk show hosts think the reporters are lefties. Caldara’s fellow conservative talk show host Gunny Bob was also flabbergasted to find out I’m biased.
They must not be reading the newspaper very closely.
I have to admit, I thought Caldara was smarter than Gunny, but maybe they both don’t make the distinction between an opinion column like mine, found in the commentary section of the newspaper, and the news section, which is found in the front and is more popular.
Maybe Caldara reads the newspaper backwards, and so he thinks the commentary is actually the news?
At the Rocky, in my media column, I’m hired to critique the news from a leftist’s perspective. I try to be fair, and I write a disclosure when a client’s positions touch on something I’m writing about.
But I’m supposed to view the news from the perspective of the political left. Just like Caldara’s employee, Dave Kopel, critiques the news from his right-leaning perspective.
The Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara is outraged that the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post covered the “swastika guy” hugging nationally syndicated columnist Michele Malkin at Caldara’s anti-stimulus rally at the Colorado Capitol yesterday.
“The idea that the media would take this spun story, about some guy who stands up next to Michele Malkin, somehow that’s a story?” Caldara told me. “I looked at the photos, and there was a photo of [the swastika guy] standing next to another guy holding a sign that also said Obama but instead of a swastika, it had a hammer and sickle. That one didn’t seem to rile anybody even though many fold more died under the symbol of a hammer and sickle than a swastika. But that doesn’t get the same sort of media rage, and if you’re looking at this from a media point of view, I would hope in all honesty you would criticize the media for biting on such a transparent attack ploy.”
Reporters at Caldara’s rally saw some weird things. They saw a live pig. They saw a roasted pig. They saw a swastika. All these things are of note, and reporters were right to include them in their stories about the rally. That’s what The Denver Post did in its article.
The Rocky, according to Caldara, got its story about the swastika guy later, after ProgressNow Colorado and others posted the Malkin photo. Caldara makes this conclusion because the Rocky reporter tried to reach him after the rally had ended. The Rocky’s story references the Malkin photo on the blogs.
Should the Rocky have written 200 words about the photo? Yes.
I mean, if you see a photo of a prominent person hugging someone with a swastika in his hands, you have to wonder what’s going on. The Rocky contacted Penry, and he gave a response. The Rocky tried to reach Caldara. And the Rocky tried to reach Malkin as well, to find out the circumstances of the hug. It’s a valid question and a valid story, handled fairly and accurately by the Rocky.
Caldara disagrees. “It seemed like a low-blow story and a low-blow tactic of personal destruction that has [ProgressNow Colorado’s] Huttner’s marks all over it. To say, ah, we got a picture of some idiot next to Michele Malkin. Instead of addressing the stimulus package, let’s go after a swastika. It might be working for a certain crowd, but it certainly seems petty.”
I attended the rally with Huttner, and I don’t think it was petty to promote the Malkin photo.
Sure, as Caldara says, you could see ugly things at a rally of progressives, just like you saw at Caldara’s rally of righties. And if a person was holding a swastika and was caught on camera hugging a prominent lefty, reporters would have the right to ask questions about it.
As for the politics of personal destruction, take a look at what the Republicans tried to do to Barack Obama in the last election. Does William Ayers ring a bell?
The most obvious way that the Rocky could avoid death would be if a buyer emerged.
But MediaNews hates this idea. In fact, it announced that if the Rocky is sold, MediaNews would exercise its right, as written in the joint operating agreement, to buy the Denver Newspaper Agency, the company jointly owned by E.W. Scripps and MediaNews. If it were not a partner in the DNA, the new buyer of the Rocky would not have access to printing presses and other business services provided by the Denver Newspaper Agency.
This might scare off a buyer, if it’s legal for MediaNews to do it, that is.
In Thursday’s Rocky, Mark Fitzgerald, an editor at Editor and Publisher, was quoted as saying he thought the Justice Department could not force MediaNews to accept the new owner of the Rocky Mountain News as a partner the JOA, because the Justice Department “approved the agreement that allows MediaNews right of first refusal.” Fitzgerald also said he didn’t think the Justice Department had “standing to say that you’ve got to be a partner with somebody you don’t want to.”
I asked JOA legal expert Stephen Barnett via email what he thought of Fitzgerald’s opinion, as you can see below, he did not agree with Fitzgerald. Barnett, who’s written about numerous JOAs, emailed me:
“I think Justice would have ‘standing’ to require sale of a publisher’s interest in the JOA, and Justice pretty much did that in Honolulu. But as a practical matter — and maybe a constitutional one — it does seem wrong to require a publisher to partner with someone against its will. BUT when the partnership is imposed automatically by a right of first refusal, I think that’s a special case; that amounts to giving one paper control of both, and I think enforcing such a right would be invalid under the Newspaper Preservation Act. This question was raised in the Salt Lake City case, and Justice seemed reluctant to enforce a right of first refusal, although the question wasn’t faced.”
I then called Fitzgerald, a highly respected newspaper expert himself who knows how to size up his sources, to find out whom he believes has more knowledge about the legal intricacies of JOAs. Is it Barnett or him?
Fitzgerald said of Barnett, “He’s more of an expert on it than I. There’s no doubt about that.” He added, “He’s certainly more of an expert than I am on these matters.”
So the Rocky’s source, who came down on the side of MediaNews, has deferred to my source.
But it doesn’t mean lawyers will agree on all this, of course. I’m sure MediaNews has a lawyer on the payroll who’s ready to argue that MediaNews can refuse to accept as a JOA partner any new owner of the Rocky, thanks to the MediaNews’ right of first refusal that’s in the JOA.
But I’d like to find a legal expert, if there is one, who will differ with Barnett, who may be the most credible expert on this topic, and say so on the record.
No matter how you look at it, the first phrase that comes to my mind is, see you in court.
Congratulations to the Rocky Mountain News for being the first of the two dailies to publish anything on specific actions that the Justice Department might take if the Rocky were sold.
The Rocky asserted as fact that Justice would review any sale of the Rocky, and it offered two views on whether Justice might force MediaNews to accept a new partner in the JOA.
Here’s what today’s Rocky story had to say:
“The Justice Department, which approved the 2001 JOA between The Post and News, would have to review any sale transaction. Tracy Simmons, administrative officer of the Denver Newspaper Guild, said Wednesday, “I’m no attorney, but my understanding is that you can’t separate the newsroom from the (Denver Newspaper Agency) without being in violation of the JOA. “The rationale for the JOA was to preserve two independent editorial voices, and any move to compromise that raises questions for the Justice Department.” Mark Fitzgerald, editor-at- large of newspaper industry trade publication Editor & Publisher, had a different take. “I don’t think Justice would have much to say about it,” he said. “It approved the agreement that allows MediaNews right of first refusal. I don’t see any standing (by Justice) to say that you’ve got to be a partner with somebody you don’t want to.” Fitzgerald cited the case of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, which wanted to shut down in the mid-1980s. Although Justice told the newspaper’s owners that they had to look for a buyer, regulators didn’t force the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to accept that buyer as a joint operating partner.”
But the St. Louis Globe-Democrat could operate as an independent daily without the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
In Denver, the new owner of the Rocky probably wouldn’t be able to print the newspaper, unless it’s part of the JOA. So Justice, whose goal would be to preserve two newspapers, might take a different approach here and force MediaNews to accept the new buyer.
SquareState.net accurately summarizes previous references in the Post and the Rocky to possible actions by the Justice Department here.
I’ve been trying to convince journalists to post comments on the discussion boards under their articles online.
If more journalists would comment, we’d probably see more people opining there, with different points of view. This could raise the level of the debates on these discussion boards, and help educate people about journalism and the issues. It would also educate journalists, who need to hear more from citizens and interact with them more.
But journalists seem to have a snotty attitude toward the folks who use the discussion boards. I don’t blame them, to a degreee, but they should comment anyway. I know some journalists read them, but they don’t comment.
I also know a lot of people who read the discussion boards–but never leave a comment.
So I was surprised to find someone claiming to be Gunny Bob, a talk radio host on KOA, commenting on the discussion board under a recent Rocky column of mine. I’ve never seen a mainstream journalist’s name the discussion boards of the daiies? Have you?
I don’t mean to imply that Gunny is a journalist, but here’s what he had to say:
“Jason, during the campaigns you called into my show to express how gleeful you were that so many liberals “hate Bush.” You did this as you rode around in a farcically pedantic and sophomoric truck hauling statues of Bush and McCain embracing. You were giddy with intolerance, venom and loathing. That same embarrassing attitude comes across in your columns, as it does in Littwin’s, Campos’ and so on, as well as the paper’s frequently laughable editorials. When hate becomes the life blood of a media outlet, like Air America that outlet will fail. And you were a part of it. Your own bigotry, arrogance and hate has cost you your job and now you are blaming Scripps rather than yourself in any way. The truth hurts, Jason, but pain builds character.”
Now, it’s possible this wasn’t really Gunny, so I emailed him. He confirmed that he was the author. He seems to be a bit of a regular on the Rocky site. See his online comments in response to a blog by Rocky Editor John Temple.
I respect Gunny for commenting, even if his remarks don’t raise the quality of the online debate and even if his comment is ridiculous because he doesn’t explain why I’m a bigot.
In fact, if you’ll allow me to digress, Gunny appears to be a bigot himself, or completely clueless, judging from his recent comment spotlighted by Colorado Media Matters. Gunny said that if gays serve in the military, then more soldiers will be exposed to the HIV virus. CMM points out that HIV-positive military applicants are rejected and those who become HIV-positive during their service cannot serve overseas. Gunny’s comment sparked a national campaign asking KOA to reprimand Newman.
Oh well. My point is that it’s pretty pathetic that Gunny might be the only representative of the mainstream media who’s commenting on online articles.
There are a few theories on why E.W. Scripps is racing to dump the Rocky, putting it up for sale for just one month. One is, Scripps can afford to lose a bit of money for a month to see of a buyer comes along and offers a lot of money, even if the Rocky is sold at a bargain price.
Another theory is that Scripps’ lawyers advised the company to put the newspaper up for sale for a month to show the Justice Department that it tried to sell the newspaper. (See my rejected Rocky column below.)
Another theory was that Scripps wanted to get rid of the Rocky before the Obama Administration took office, because Bush’s Justice Department would be less likely to intervene to save the Rocky than Obama’s new team at Justice. In my rejected Rocky column below, I quoted two experts who agreed that Obama’s Justice Department would be more likely to intervene that Bush’s.
That was probably wrong, because the Rocky is still with us and the new Administration has taken power. You could still make the argument that the new Administration is less likely to intervene soon than it would be six months from now, after it’s had time to get its act together. So there still could be an incentive for Scripps to act quickly, before Obama’s Justice Department is fully organized.
In any case, and this is the more important point, JOA legal expert Stephen Barnett says the Rocky does not need the approval of the Justice Department to shut the Rocky, if it simply shutters the newspaper and walks away from its investment in the Denver Newspaper Agency, the company that publishes the Denver Post and the Rocky and is joinly owned by Scripps and Dean Singleton’s MediaNews Group.
This is unlikely, though, given the value of the Denver Newspaper Agency.
As former Post and Rocky business editor Don Knox told Westword, the jointly-owned company has $300 million in revenue. Yes, it’s got lots of debt, too, but Scripps would have to be reeeeely desparate to just leave the DNA to co-owner MediaNews and skip town. And Scripps isn’t so desparate yet, you’d think.
So this means that the most likely scenario, as reported by the Denver Post, is for MediaNews and Scripps to make a deal to close the Rocky–to “negotiate an exit strategy,” as the Post put it. And, if you believe Barnett, this would require approval of the Justice Department BEFORE the Rocky is closed.
And that’s when Justice could intervene to require, for example, a longer sales period, as explained in my rejected Rocky column below.
A contract to close the Rocky between Scripps and MediaNews could involve many unknown elements, but one option would be for Scripps to retain its position as 50-50 owner of the DNA. Or it could sell its share to Singleton, leaving Denver to MediaNews and the Post. The difficulty with the latter option would be determine what kind of payment the Rocky would get from Singleton for its share of the DNA.
In the past, when a newspaper has jumped out of a JOA, it has been given a share of future profit. (Read a bit about this here, for example.) But in the current economic environment, especially given Scripps professed views on the dismal future of big-city newspapers, you wouldn’t think Scripps would want any part of such an arrangment, given the (at least) short-term losses that the DNA is expecting.
So, perhaps the DNA would declare bankruptcy and, at the same time, close the Rocky. Singleton has opposed a bankruptcy delcaration, but maybe he’d go along with it to shed the Rocky.
Knox told Westword he thought bankruptcy made sense, though he suggested it as a way to save the Rocky, not kill it: “Just do a bankruptcy for the DNA. Change the equity and extend the lease payments. After all, it’s got $300 million in revenue. That doesn’t sound like a broken company to me. That sounds like a company with challenges …- but in 2008, there are a lot of companies with challenges.”
The bottom line is that the most likely scenarios to close the Rocky involve some sort of agreement between Scripps and Media News to do so. Such an agreement would most likely have to be approved by Obama’s Justice Department.
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