Ukraine protesters rally after attack on journalist Teyana Chornovil
By Barbara Miller
ABC News
Dec. 27, 2013
Photo: Protesters hold photos of Tetyana Chornovil during a demonstration at the Internal Affairs Ministry. (AFP: Sergei Supinsky)
Journalist Teyana Chornovil was attacked in the early hours of Christmas morning, shortly after publishing an article on the alleged assets of the interior minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko.
Ms Chornovil, 34, has written a series of articles purporting to expose the wealth of senior government figures and was an active participant in the current wave of anti-government protests that were sparked by president Viktor Yanukovych's decision to turn away from a trade deal with the European Union.
Footage from a dashboard camera in Ms Chornovil's car appears to show the early stages of the attack and has reportedly been used to help track down the alleged attackers.
"A jeep ran into me, tried to smash into me. They broke my window, I jumped out of my car and tried to escape, but they caught me and started to beat me up," Ms Chornovil said.
Police say three men are now being questioned.
Footage uploaded to YouTube shows the journalist with a bloodied and bruised face being treated by medical staff.
The incident has sparked fresh protests in Kiev, with opposition groups gathering outside the Interior Ministry chanting: "Down with the bloody minister."
"I simply can't stand this injustice anymore, everyday so many people come out to protest, but nobody's listening to us," one protester said.
Mark Rachkevych, the business editor of the Kyiv Post newspaper, says the public is demanding those who ordered the attack are punished.
"The more they use force, the more radicalised protestors become," he told AM.
"The public wants the ones who ordered it - not [the] fall guys, not lower level people."
Hundreds of protesters are continuing to camp out around braziers on Kiev's Independence Square, swelled by weekly mass rallies of around 100,000 or more.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Reform the New York Times! Media protecting companies tied to Chinese corruption
Reform the New York Times!
Media must stop protecting companies tied to Chinese corruption
U.S. corporations are complicit in Chinese corruption. Why are our newspapers so afraid to report the truth
Patrick L. Smith
Salon.com
Nov 23, 2013
Once upon a time, people on this side of the Pacific were encouraged to assume that China’s post-Mao economic reforms would make the land of 1.4 billion mostly miserable souls a democratic, equitable, orderly place. It always happens this way, after all: Open markets make open, free societies. Straight-line equation.
And this was why it was terrific that hundreds of multinational banks and manufacturers were investing in Chinese operations. Making China democratic was, when one truly got down to it, what all those CEOs wanted. You knew this was so: You read it in the newspapers.
Reading now about China’s latest reforms, announced the other day after a plenum of the Communist Party’s central committee, one is not treated even to the old pretense. Of course, one is not treated to the story, either — and certainly not any mention that the old pretense has turned out to be a pretense.
The story would be too much to take. Not to raise ignitable topics among readers of my previous column about how the New York Times shades the truth with quotation marks, but the story would require that reforms be changed to “reforms.” The story is that America and most of its people are heavily dependent upon, if not addicted to, the very system of suffocating control and exploitation they profess to regret.
Here it is in a phrase: We are all corrupt Communist Party apparatchiks now. And the moment comes when we have to recognize that we have been since the days of Deng way back in the 1980s. Why can I not read about this in my newspapers?
The reforms just announced by President Xi Jinping are supposed to be the greatest thing since Saran Wrap. (Is that made in China now, too?) Pundits and Sinologists compare them with the big reversals Deng Xiaoping initiated when Mao was dead two years and it was safe to come out of the closet with the getting-rich-is-glorious bit.
We await a full-dress document listing all of Xi’s reforms. So far we have some price liberalization, some reduction of investment restrictions, some increased competition for state-owned enterprises (known as SOE’s), and so on. All of this — the phrase now prompting a frisson in the financial press — is intended to “allow the market to play a decisive role in allocating resources,” as the central committee communiqué explained it.
I do not find markets especially reliable in allocating resources — ask a mergers-and-acquisitions man and then ask a schoolteacher — but we can leave this for a minute.
There are some social measures planned. Urban migrants will get equal treatment when they arrive in cities to find work. Farmers will be allowed to sell land when they surrender the village to join the urban drift. The item readers will have read about is the liberalization of the one-child-only policy, which was among Deng’s earliest reforms — excuse me, “reforms.”
Look at this list, sketchy as it is. What do we have here from the desk of Comrade Xi? The correspondents in Beijing will not help you on this point.
These are top-down, technocratic adjustments intended to make China’s authoritarian-capitalist system work better (or “better”). It is the obvious point of the market adjustments. Most of the new social provisions are simply responses to labor shortages that will, if unaddressed, leave factories short of fodder and cause wages to rise.
Reforms alter institutions; they imply fundamental change in a society’s direction. What our press has just reported are “reforms.” They offer more efficient ways to exploit and control people within the social economy just as it is. They are mechanisms, not reforms. And this is why they meet with unanimous approval in the West. The China play is too good to change but at the margins.
It is almost as if Xi and his central committee comrades wanted to put this point as starkly as possible. Along with the economic “reforms” came a big one on the administrative side. Beijing is now to form a “National Security Commission” to concentrate power over domestic security, external intelligence, foreign policy, and military policy. Xi is likely to head this agency. My favorite detail: The model is a cross between our National Security Council and the National Security Agency. Something to be proud of in some quarters.
We come to what is missing from the reports of Xi and his “reforms.” We have no account of our complicity, our interest in Xi’s success as he fortifies and extends centralized power such that a one-party dictatorship can survive a carefully attenuated opening of the most profitable sectors of the social economy. It is because of our complicity that our press overstates the Chinese case: “Reforms” have to come across as reforms.
The Financial Times now runs headlines (Nov. 16, Page 3) of “hopes for a decade of radical change.” With respect for a newspaper I read regularly, this is misleading nonsense.
A couple of recent incidents in the press cast curious light. Ten days ago came a long piece revealing how Matt Winkler, the controversial (let us remain polite) editor in chief of Bloomberg News, spiked a year-long investigation of corrupt ties between a Chinese tycoon and senior C.P. officials. “If we run the story we’ll be kicked out of China,” one of the correspondents quoted his boss as saying in a late-night telephone call between New York and Hong Kong.
Winkler denies all, but then he would. (Transparency here: This columnist once wrote commentary for Winkler’s organization and got a variant of the same treatment.) If any reader can think of a lowlier example of depravity in the face of Chinese power and the profits earned therefrom, please use the comment box below.
It gets more curious. The Winkler story was leaked to and published by none other than the New York Times, which put it on Page One (Nov. 9). And curiouser still. Five days later the Times ran a huge takeout on — believe it — its investigation into how JPMorgan Chase had more or less bribed the daughter of Wen Jiabao, who was then premier, to win underwriting business for the China Railway Group, one of the larger SOE’s.
The Times item was by David Barboza, the paper’s Shanghai correspondent. (More transparency: Barboza was previously a colleague.) It is a remarkable piece of work; the graphic mapping the Wen family’s many imaginative corruptions must have cost thousands and a lot of legwork, and is well worth all of what was spent assembling it.
So far as I know, Barboza continues to live and file in Shanghai. The piece is remarkable (and devilishly timed to follow the Winkler revelation). A tip of the cap. But something is missing, making an untruth by omission.
The flow of under-the-table funds from Western banks and corporations is essential to Chinese corruption and those who benefit from it on both sides. Follow the logic out: It is one reason (of many, of course) that China is among the world’s most inequitable societies by way of income distribution. JPMorgan did but one thing differently: It got caught (which seems to be CEO Jamie Dimon’s special gift).
I find nothing radical in the thesis just described. It is a straight-up replica of what I used to call the Cold War social contract when I lived in Southeast Asia. Populations accept varying degrees of tyranny, political silence and across-the-board corruption among the elites, always with foreign funds to keep it all going. In exchange they receive a modicum of material comfort — TV’s, refrigerators and so on, usually the first they have ever owned.
I shorthand the deal as “shut up and change the channel.” You recall some of the names: Marcos, Suharto, Park Chung Hee, the amazing Kakuei Tanaka and his Lockheed scandal. I think Kaku-san actually did make green money sprout from trees before he was done.
To sum up: China under Xi Jinping does not represent a reform of this long-standing arrangement across the Pacific. Add his name to the list. And never leave home without your quotation marks.
Footnote: At midweek, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan has just withdrawn as underwriter of a $2 billion stock offering in Hong Kong by a mainland institution called China Everbright Bank. This is rare in the merchant-banking game. It seems that JPMorgan hired a young man named Tang Xiaoping prior to getting its piece of cake. Tang’s dad is chairman of China Everbright Group, the state-backed owner of Everbright Bank. This is one of several such deals U.S. authorities are investigating under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Remember that? Congress passed it after Lockheed got caught bribing Tanaka, who was premier at the time (mid–1970s). What a footprint we leave at the other end of the Pacific.
Patrick Smith is the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote “Letter from Tokyo” for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications.
Media must stop protecting companies tied to Chinese corruption
U.S. corporations are complicit in Chinese corruption. Why are our newspapers so afraid to report the truth
Patrick L. Smith
Salon.com
Nov 23, 2013
Once upon a time, people on this side of the Pacific were encouraged to assume that China’s post-Mao economic reforms would make the land of 1.4 billion mostly miserable souls a democratic, equitable, orderly place. It always happens this way, after all: Open markets make open, free societies. Straight-line equation.
And this was why it was terrific that hundreds of multinational banks and manufacturers were investing in Chinese operations. Making China democratic was, when one truly got down to it, what all those CEOs wanted. You knew this was so: You read it in the newspapers.
Reading now about China’s latest reforms, announced the other day after a plenum of the Communist Party’s central committee, one is not treated even to the old pretense. Of course, one is not treated to the story, either — and certainly not any mention that the old pretense has turned out to be a pretense.
The story would be too much to take. Not to raise ignitable topics among readers of my previous column about how the New York Times shades the truth with quotation marks, but the story would require that reforms be changed to “reforms.” The story is that America and most of its people are heavily dependent upon, if not addicted to, the very system of suffocating control and exploitation they profess to regret.
Here it is in a phrase: We are all corrupt Communist Party apparatchiks now. And the moment comes when we have to recognize that we have been since the days of Deng way back in the 1980s. Why can I not read about this in my newspapers?
The reforms just announced by President Xi Jinping are supposed to be the greatest thing since Saran Wrap. (Is that made in China now, too?) Pundits and Sinologists compare them with the big reversals Deng Xiaoping initiated when Mao was dead two years and it was safe to come out of the closet with the getting-rich-is-glorious bit.
We await a full-dress document listing all of Xi’s reforms. So far we have some price liberalization, some reduction of investment restrictions, some increased competition for state-owned enterprises (known as SOE’s), and so on. All of this — the phrase now prompting a frisson in the financial press — is intended to “allow the market to play a decisive role in allocating resources,” as the central committee communiqué explained it.
I do not find markets especially reliable in allocating resources — ask a mergers-and-acquisitions man and then ask a schoolteacher — but we can leave this for a minute.
There are some social measures planned. Urban migrants will get equal treatment when they arrive in cities to find work. Farmers will be allowed to sell land when they surrender the village to join the urban drift. The item readers will have read about is the liberalization of the one-child-only policy, which was among Deng’s earliest reforms — excuse me, “reforms.”
Look at this list, sketchy as it is. What do we have here from the desk of Comrade Xi? The correspondents in Beijing will not help you on this point.
These are top-down, technocratic adjustments intended to make China’s authoritarian-capitalist system work better (or “better”). It is the obvious point of the market adjustments. Most of the new social provisions are simply responses to labor shortages that will, if unaddressed, leave factories short of fodder and cause wages to rise.
Reforms alter institutions; they imply fundamental change in a society’s direction. What our press has just reported are “reforms.” They offer more efficient ways to exploit and control people within the social economy just as it is. They are mechanisms, not reforms. And this is why they meet with unanimous approval in the West. The China play is too good to change but at the margins.
It is almost as if Xi and his central committee comrades wanted to put this point as starkly as possible. Along with the economic “reforms” came a big one on the administrative side. Beijing is now to form a “National Security Commission” to concentrate power over domestic security, external intelligence, foreign policy, and military policy. Xi is likely to head this agency. My favorite detail: The model is a cross between our National Security Council and the National Security Agency. Something to be proud of in some quarters.
We come to what is missing from the reports of Xi and his “reforms.” We have no account of our complicity, our interest in Xi’s success as he fortifies and extends centralized power such that a one-party dictatorship can survive a carefully attenuated opening of the most profitable sectors of the social economy. It is because of our complicity that our press overstates the Chinese case: “Reforms” have to come across as reforms.
The Financial Times now runs headlines (Nov. 16, Page 3) of “hopes for a decade of radical change.” With respect for a newspaper I read regularly, this is misleading nonsense.
A couple of recent incidents in the press cast curious light. Ten days ago came a long piece revealing how Matt Winkler, the controversial (let us remain polite) editor in chief of Bloomberg News, spiked a year-long investigation of corrupt ties between a Chinese tycoon and senior C.P. officials. “If we run the story we’ll be kicked out of China,” one of the correspondents quoted his boss as saying in a late-night telephone call between New York and Hong Kong.
Winkler denies all, but then he would. (Transparency here: This columnist once wrote commentary for Winkler’s organization and got a variant of the same treatment.) If any reader can think of a lowlier example of depravity in the face of Chinese power and the profits earned therefrom, please use the comment box below.
It gets more curious. The Winkler story was leaked to and published by none other than the New York Times, which put it on Page One (Nov. 9). And curiouser still. Five days later the Times ran a huge takeout on — believe it — its investigation into how JPMorgan Chase had more or less bribed the daughter of Wen Jiabao, who was then premier, to win underwriting business for the China Railway Group, one of the larger SOE’s.
The Times item was by David Barboza, the paper’s Shanghai correspondent. (More transparency: Barboza was previously a colleague.) It is a remarkable piece of work; the graphic mapping the Wen family’s many imaginative corruptions must have cost thousands and a lot of legwork, and is well worth all of what was spent assembling it.
So far as I know, Barboza continues to live and file in Shanghai. The piece is remarkable (and devilishly timed to follow the Winkler revelation). A tip of the cap. But something is missing, making an untruth by omission.
The flow of under-the-table funds from Western banks and corporations is essential to Chinese corruption and those who benefit from it on both sides. Follow the logic out: It is one reason (of many, of course) that China is among the world’s most inequitable societies by way of income distribution. JPMorgan did but one thing differently: It got caught (which seems to be CEO Jamie Dimon’s special gift).
I find nothing radical in the thesis just described. It is a straight-up replica of what I used to call the Cold War social contract when I lived in Southeast Asia. Populations accept varying degrees of tyranny, political silence and across-the-board corruption among the elites, always with foreign funds to keep it all going. In exchange they receive a modicum of material comfort — TV’s, refrigerators and so on, usually the first they have ever owned.
I shorthand the deal as “shut up and change the channel.” You recall some of the names: Marcos, Suharto, Park Chung Hee, the amazing Kakuei Tanaka and his Lockheed scandal. I think Kaku-san actually did make green money sprout from trees before he was done.
To sum up: China under Xi Jinping does not represent a reform of this long-standing arrangement across the Pacific. Add his name to the list. And never leave home without your quotation marks.
Footnote: At midweek, the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan has just withdrawn as underwriter of a $2 billion stock offering in Hong Kong by a mainland institution called China Everbright Bank. This is rare in the merchant-banking game. It seems that JPMorgan hired a young man named Tang Xiaoping prior to getting its piece of cake. Tang’s dad is chairman of China Everbright Group, the state-backed owner of Everbright Bank. This is one of several such deals U.S. authorities are investigating under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Remember that? Congress passed it after Lockheed got caught bribing Tanaka, who was premier at the time (mid–1970s). What a footprint we leave at the other end of the Pacific.
Patrick Smith is the author of “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” was the International Herald Tribune’s bureau chief in Hong Kong and then Tokyo from 1985 to 1992. During this time he also wrote “Letter from Tokyo” for the New Yorker. He is the author of four previous books and has contributed frequently to the New York Times, the Nation, the Washington Quarterly, and other publications.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash
By Daniel Politi
Slate
June 23, 2013
v Journalist Michael Hastings wrote an email to his colleagues hours before he died last week in which he said his “close friends and associates” were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to “go off the radar for a bit.” The 33-year-old journalist said he was “onto a big story,” according to KTLA that publishes a copy of the email that Hastings sent at around 1 p.m. Monday June 17. Hastings died at around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning in a fiery one-vehicle car crash. Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who knew Hastings from Afghanistan, supplied a copy of the email to the network.
v “It alarmed me very much,” Biggs, who was blind-copied on the email, said. “I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me.” The FBI has denied Hastings was under investigation. But WikiLeaks published a message on Twitter last week that said Hastings contacted the organization’s lawyers hours before he died, “saying the FBI was investigating him.”
The email with the subject “FBI Investigation, re: NSA” reads:
Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.
Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the radat for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Michael
By Daniel Politi
Slate
June 23, 2013
v Journalist Michael Hastings wrote an email to his colleagues hours before he died last week in which he said his “close friends and associates” were being interviewed by the FBI and he was going to “go off the radar for a bit.” The 33-year-old journalist said he was “onto a big story,” according to KTLA that publishes a copy of the email that Hastings sent at around 1 p.m. Monday June 17. Hastings died at around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday morning in a fiery one-vehicle car crash. Staff Sgt. Joseph Biggs, who knew Hastings from Afghanistan, supplied a copy of the email to the network.
v “It alarmed me very much,” Biggs, who was blind-copied on the email, said. “I just said it doesn’t seem like him. I don’t know, I just had this gut feeling and it just really bothered me.” The FBI has denied Hastings was under investigation. But WikiLeaks published a message on Twitter last week that said Hastings contacted the organization’s lawyers hours before he died, “saying the FBI was investigating him.”
The email with the subject “FBI Investigation, re: NSA” reads:
Hey [redacted] the Feds are interviewing my "close friends and associates." Perhaps if the authorities arrive "BuzzFeed GQ," er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.
Also: I'm onto a big story, and need to go off the radat for a bit.
All the best, and hope to see you all soon.
Michael
Monday, April 29, 2013
Qworty goes nuts on Wikipedia regarding Amanda Filipacchi
Writer Andrew Leonard of Salon.com gets a bit defensive on behalf of the New York Times in the following article, although I do agree that editors at Wikipedia like Qworty have agendas other than the search for truth. Does Wikipedia have a way to demote editors who go out of control?
Wikipedia’s shame
Sexism isn't the problem at the online encyclopedia. The real corruption is the lust for revenge
By Andrew Leonard
Salon.com
Apr 29, 2013
Is Wikipedia sexist? Or is it merely an unreliable mess of angry, ax-wielding psychos engaged in agenda-driven editing? Or is it something much more complicated than that?
Last Wednesday, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published an Op-Ed in the New York Times recounting her discovery that Wikipedia editors were culling women authors from Wikipedia’s list of “American Novelists” and relegating them into their own subcategory: “American Women Novelists.”
“The intention appears to be to create a list of ‘American Novelists’ on Wikipedia that is made up almost entirely of men,” she wrote, noting that there was no “American Men Novelists” subcategory. (Although, amusingly, just such a category was created shortly after the Op-Ed appeared.)
In the furor that erupted on Wikipedia in response to Filipacchi’s article, it was quickly determined that the bad behavior she noticed appeared to be the work of a single misguided Wikipedia editor. One could argue that, if true, this made the Times’ headline “Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists” unfair and inaccurate. All of Wikipedia was being tarred by the unthinking stupidity of one bad editor.
But then things got a lot worse. In a follow-up Op-Ed published on Sunday, Filipacchi recounted the all-too-predictable reaction from aggrieved Wikipedia editors.
As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad they’d just taken out the useful sources.
Welcome to the age of “revenge editing.” The edits didn’t stop at Filipacchi’s page. Edits were also made to pages about her novels, stripping content from them on the grounds that they were overly self-promotional (a big Wikipedia no-no.) One editor, as recently as Monday morning, even started editing the pages devoted to Filpacchi’s parents, and slashed huge swaths from a page about the media conglomerate Hachette-Filipacchi, whose chairman emeritus happens to be Filipacchi’s father, Daniel Filipacchi.
As is usually the case with Wikipedia, high-profile “revenge editing” clearly motivated by animus tends to draw a lot of attention. A frequent result: ludicrous “edit wars” in which successive revisions are undone in rapid succession. Eventually, someone higher up in the chain of hierarchy steps in and freezes a page in which an edit war is occurring, or some measure of consensus is reached after a lot of shouting. Indeed, hardcore Wikipedia advocates argue that no matter how dumb or ugly the original bad edit or mistake might have been, the process, carried out in the open for all to see, generally results, in the long run, in something more closely resembling truth than what we might see in more mainstream approaches to knowledge assembly.
Wikipedia’s saving grace is that all the edit wars — all the ugly evidence of “revenge editing” — is preserved for eternity for anyone curious enough to investigate in the “talk pages” that reveal precisely how Wikipedia’s knowledge is constructed. A review of the talk pages associated with the various Filipacchi-related Wikipedia pages edited after the Op-Ed’s publication reveals the vast majority of the anti-Filipacchi edits to have been made by just one person, a Wikipedia editor who goes by the user-name “Qworty.”
Wikipedia’s shame
Sexism isn't the problem at the online encyclopedia. The real corruption is the lust for revenge
By Andrew Leonard
Salon.com
Apr 29, 2013
Is Wikipedia sexist? Or is it merely an unreliable mess of angry, ax-wielding psychos engaged in agenda-driven editing? Or is it something much more complicated than that?
Last Wednesday, novelist Amanda Filipacchi published an Op-Ed in the New York Times recounting her discovery that Wikipedia editors were culling women authors from Wikipedia’s list of “American Novelists” and relegating them into their own subcategory: “American Women Novelists.”
“The intention appears to be to create a list of ‘American Novelists’ on Wikipedia that is made up almost entirely of men,” she wrote, noting that there was no “American Men Novelists” subcategory. (Although, amusingly, just such a category was created shortly after the Op-Ed appeared.)
In the furor that erupted on Wikipedia in response to Filipacchi’s article, it was quickly determined that the bad behavior she noticed appeared to be the work of a single misguided Wikipedia editor. One could argue that, if true, this made the Times’ headline “Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists” unfair and inaccurate. All of Wikipedia was being tarred by the unthinking stupidity of one bad editor.
But then things got a lot worse. In a follow-up Op-Ed published on Sunday, Filipacchi recounted the all-too-predictable reaction from aggrieved Wikipedia editors.
As soon as the Op-Ed article appeared, unhappy Wikipedia editors pounced on my Wikipedia page and started making alterations to it, erasing as much as they possibly could without (I assume) technically breaking the rules. They removed the links to outside sources, like interviews of me and reviews of my novels. Not surprisingly, they also removed the link to the Op-Ed article. At the same time, they put up a banner at the top of my page saying the page needed “additional citations for verifications.” Too bad they’d just taken out the useful sources.
Welcome to the age of “revenge editing.” The edits didn’t stop at Filipacchi’s page. Edits were also made to pages about her novels, stripping content from them on the grounds that they were overly self-promotional (a big Wikipedia no-no.) One editor, as recently as Monday morning, even started editing the pages devoted to Filpacchi’s parents, and slashed huge swaths from a page about the media conglomerate Hachette-Filipacchi, whose chairman emeritus happens to be Filipacchi’s father, Daniel Filipacchi.
As is usually the case with Wikipedia, high-profile “revenge editing” clearly motivated by animus tends to draw a lot of attention. A frequent result: ludicrous “edit wars” in which successive revisions are undone in rapid succession. Eventually, someone higher up in the chain of hierarchy steps in and freezes a page in which an edit war is occurring, or some measure of consensus is reached after a lot of shouting. Indeed, hardcore Wikipedia advocates argue that no matter how dumb or ugly the original bad edit or mistake might have been, the process, carried out in the open for all to see, generally results, in the long run, in something more closely resembling truth than what we might see in more mainstream approaches to knowledge assembly.
Wikipedia’s saving grace is that all the edit wars — all the ugly evidence of “revenge editing” — is preserved for eternity for anyone curious enough to investigate in the “talk pages” that reveal precisely how Wikipedia’s knowledge is constructed. A review of the talk pages associated with the various Filipacchi-related Wikipedia pages edited after the Op-Ed’s publication reveals the vast majority of the anti-Filipacchi edits to have been made by just one person, a Wikipedia editor who goes by the user-name “Qworty.”
Saturday, April 06, 2013
Self-publishing is the future — and great for writers
I strongly recommend clicking on the title below to see all the great links on the Salon site.
Hugh Howey: Self-publishing is the future — and great for writers
Books have changed forever, and that's good. Writers will find readers and make more money going it alone, like me
By Hugh Howey
Salon.com
Apr 4, 2013
Contrary to recent reports, I am not the story of self-publishing.
The story of self-publishing is Jan Strnad, a 62-year-old educator hoping to retire in four years. To do so is going to require supplemental income, which he is currently earning from his self-published novels. In 2012, Jan made $11,406.31 from his work. That’s more than double what he made from the same book in the six months it was available from Kensington, a major publisher. He has since released a second work and now makes around $2,000 a month, even though you’ve never heard of him.
Rachel Schurig has sold 100,000 e-books and made six figures last year. She is the story of self-publishing. Rick Gualtieri cleared over $25,000 in 2012 from his writing. He says it’s like getting a Christmas bonus every month. Amanda Brice is an intellectual property attorney for the federal government. In her spare time, she writes teen mysteries and adult romantic comedies. She averages $750 a month with her work.
Like Schurig, Robert J. Crane is quickly moving from midlist to A-list. When Robert shared his earnings with me late last year, his monthly income had gone from $110.29 in June to $13,000+ in November. He was making more in a month than many debut authors are likely to receive as an advance from a major publisher. And he still owned his rights. His earnings have only gone up since.
Right now you are probably thinking that these anecdotes of self-publishing success are the result of my having cherry-picked the winners. In fact, these stories appear in this exact order in my private message inbox over at Kindle Boards. The only sampling bias is that these writers responded to a thread I started titled: “The Self Published Authors I Want to Hear From.” I wanted to know how many forum members were making $100 to $500 a month. My suspicion was that it was more than any of us realized. Every response I received started with a variation of: “I’m actually making a lot more than that.”
My fascination with this story began back when major media outlets like Entertainment Weekly and Wired magazine called to interview me. Perhaps the transition from near-minimum-wage bookseller to New York Times bestseller was too surreal for me to embrace, but my reaction to these entreaties was that I couldn’t possibly be the real story. For every outlier like myself or Bella Andre or Amanda Hocking, there must be hundreds of people doing well enough with their writing to pay a few bills. The more time I spent online in various writing forums, the more this hunch hardened into a real theory. People I interacted with every day were appearing on bestseller lists or emailing me for advice on handling calls from agents. The hundreds appeared to be thousands. And this could only be a fraction of the actual number.
My call for anecdotes was my first attempt to find data to support this theory. Before I wrote this article, the first thing I did was click on a random page of my private message inbox. I received such a flood from that forum post that any page likely would have worked, and the first one did. I could regale you with hundreds of accounts of publishing success, all from people you’ve never heard of, all making more than most traditionally published authors, and all messaging me within a few hours of my call to arms. The story, I started to realize, was much bigger than I had thought.
Of course, you’ll see articles lamenting the paucity of sales most self-published books enjoy, but there’s a problem with comparing average self-published sales with traditionally published books. In self-publishing, the slush pile is made available to readers. These comparisons between the two paths take the tip of one iceberg (the books that made it through the gauntlet and into bookstores) with an entire iceberg (all self-published books). It’s not a fair comparison.
Another problem with the data that disparages self-publishing is that much of it comes from the age of self-pub authors having to print hundreds of books and warehouse them in their garages. These tales of literary woe will include all the people who simply wrote and published a book to tick off a task on a bucket list. Or those who wanted to share a memoir with family and friends. Or those who only had a single book in them. Or those who gave up after completing that first novel. Or those who chose to write in a genre that has a very limited readership.
I celebrate writing for any of these reasons — I wish more people wrote more often. But what fascinates me as a self-published author are not those who publish a single novel but rather those who approach this as a major hobby, a second job or even a career. Those who take their writing seriously, who publish more than one title a year and do this year after year, are finding real success with their art. They are earning hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. I’ve watched several online friends go from publishing their first books to hitting the New York Times bestseller list. I’ve watched even more get themselves out of debt while pursuing a lifelong dream. There’s a silent mob out there making hundreds of dollars a month while doing something they love, and this should be celebrated.
None of this is meant to say that everyone who self-publishes — even those who study the craft, take their work seriously, and produce a constant stream of material — will find material success. There is also luck involved and the fickle tastes of readers. But what is becoming more apparent with every passing day is that you have a better chance of paying a bill or two through self-publishing than you do through any other means of publication.
Many of you are no doubt wiping beverage spittle off your computer screens right now. Some of you are probably angry at hearing this. You may think that this is post hoc reasoning from one of the people who had success happen to him. Except that I was espousing this view well before my own works took off. It seemed logical to me then, and it seems logical to me now. As soon as the cost of distribution and production both hit zero, the game changed. It just took a while for everyone to realize it (we’re still waiting on a few laggards, but they’ll catch on eventually).
Let’s compare music and literature for a moment. No, not the industries, which are following similar disruptions due to the arrival of the digital age, I mean the people who make music and those who craft literature. Let’s look at the artists.
How many people teach themselves to play the guitar? We celebrate this, don’t we? Even as they go through the callous-building phase, we admire anyone who learns the grammar of chords and then strings these phrases together into music. They begin by playing cover tunes the way an aspiring author might write fan fiction. They go on to strum on the sidewalk with a hat by their feet much like someone might blog and hope for a donation. They play small venues on open-mic nights that we can think of as free books on Smashwords. They get a few paying gigs, which is like self-publishing on Amazon. They hope to gain a following, local at first. Maybe they’ll get invited to open for a bigger act, which would be akin to scoring a blurb from a bestselling author. Perhaps a scout will see them live or on YouTube, like an agent noticing an author on a bestseller list. This is how artists are born. They are self-made. They perform for people. They learn and improve as they do both.
The old route for literary success looks stodgy and outdated by comparison. You write in a vacuum or for a professor who frowns on genre; you workshop with other writers; you craft a query letter; you appeal to the tastes of an intern at a literary agency; you claw your way out of the slush pile; you hope to win over an editor at a major publishing house; your book comes out a year later and sits spine-out on a bookshelf for six months; it gets returned to the publisher and goes out of print; you start over. The general reader is a mile away from you in this process. You never had a chance to be heard by the only people who truly matter.
With self-publishing, you learn your craft while producing material. You win over your fans directly. You own all of your rights, and your works stay fresh and available for your lifetime (and beyond). Nothing goes out of print. I think this advantage is difficult to fully appreciate. My bestselling work was my eighth or ninth title. As soon as it took off, the rest of my material took off with it. To the reader, it was all brand-new. To those being born today who will become avid readers 15 years from now, those works will still be brand-new. My entire oeuvre will always be in print and always earning me something. Nothing is pulled and returned from the digital bookshelf.
Another advantage is price. I recommended a book to readers recently, only to discover that the e-book was priced at $12.99! I can’t believe publishers do this to themselves. But then, they have to worry about competing with their other products. If they price their backlist too low, the fear is that readers will ignore the works currently being promoted. When John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series came out at $11.99, they lost a customer: Me. At $2.99, I would have purchased every single one of those classics. I doubt I would have actually read them (again), but I would have bought them. They would have competed with nothing; the electrons wouldn’t clutter my house; the price would be impulse territory. It all comes back to the fear that the e-book will cannibalize a print copy or a more recent title. When you self-publish, you care about your work more than anyone else ever will. That means pricing it to gain as many readers as possible.
The twin advantages of price and permanence made it easy for me to walk away from offers from major publishers. Even when those offers soared into the seven figures, there was no chance that I would give up a monthly income for the rest of my life for a one-time payment, especially when that payment meant that in six months, my work would be seen as competition to whatever was newly released. The print-only deal I signed with Simon & Schuster was advantageous because my physical sales, even at thousands of dollars a month, were a fraction of my total self-published earnings. Digital is where it’s at, and even major publishers understand this.
That’s why the self-publishing community shook its collective head over a recent story here on Salon. A professed self-publishing failure turned out not to have an e-book available. Old thinking like this has no place in today’s publishing world. For all the author of that piece knows, his story might find its audience 10 years from now and hit every bestseller list. The chances aren’t great, of course, because he only wrote one novel, gave it mere months to succeed, and chose the medium least suited to discoverability. That’s how it used to work. It no longer has to.
Here’s the reality: How you publish will not significantly affect the quality of your story. If it needs a ton of work, it’s not going to make it out of the slush pile anyway. These days, manuscripts need to be perfect before they’re submitted to agents or before you self-publish, so don’t fool yourself into thinking a rough draft can become a great novel with the help of an agent or editor. It’s simply not likely to happen. Your book will be your book no matter what path you take. It won’t suddenly be horrible because you self-publish it, and it won’t be amazing just because some agent or editor seems to think so. It will need to prove itself to readers one way or the other, whichever path you take.
There are two possibilities. Your book might be in the top 1 percent of what readers are looking for — whether by the magic of your plot or the grace of your prose — in which case you are far better off self-publishing. You’ll make more money sooner, and you’ll own the rights when it comes time to negotiate with publishers (if you even care to). If, on the other hand, your work isn’t in the top 1 percent, it won’t escape the clutches of the slush pile. Your only hope in this case is to self-publish. Which means there isn’t a scenario in which I would recommend an author begin his or her career with a traditional publisher. Not a one. Even Jim Carrey is going the self-pub route with his children’s book, and he’ll make a mint because of it. The new top-down approach is to self-publish and retain ownership. The course of last resort would be to sign away your rights for the rest of your life.
Louis C.K. proved this for comedy. The better you are, the better it pays to produce and own your own work. If you’re not on that level, producing it yourself is the only option. Only option or best option. It’s that simple.
“But I only want to write,” you might say. “I don’t want to be a publisher.” Well, good luck. Even if you land with a major publishing house, the success of your work will depend on you knowing this business and embracing all the challenges that a self-published author faces. There are only a handful of authors in the world who can make a living writing and passing along those words to someone else and not doing a single other thing. Most people who attempt this method teach creative writing for a living, and not because they want to. Promotion will be up to you. Your publisher will want to see your social media presence before they offer you a book deal. Learning the ins and outs of self-publishing before signing with a major house is the best training imaginable. Not doing so would be like a hopeful race car driver not caring what’s under the hood. I’ve been shocked to discover, having worked with major publishers, that many of my self-published friends know more about the current publishing landscape than industry veterans with decades of experience. The more you learn and the more you keep an open mind, the better your chances for success.
The rest of this story will be written in the coming years. It is early yet, but I predict that more and more people will find success by self-publishing first and proving themselves to small audiences. They will follow the route of other artists who work their way up from small beginnings rather than hoping to blow it out on their first attempt on the stage. I’ve already heard from authors who gave up on self-publishing only to have their still-available works bloom years later and earn them real money. Some books will be like locusts, emerging by some fickle whim long after they were forgotten. What will matter for those books and those authors will be that the work was created and made available, and neither of those feats will expire.
Aspiring authors email me all the time asking for advice, and I tell them the same thing: I found success because I wrote for the love of writing. I self-published simply because I wanted to own my work and I wanted to make it available to readers. I expected nothing. I wrote as one might garden or knit, simply because they enjoy the act of creation. The fact that I pay my bills — a feat growing more and more common by the day — is an unexpected bonus. I’d be doing this on the street with a hat by my feet if I had to. I’d be building callouses and nodding my thanks to anyone who tossed a coin my way. Sure, it would be crazy to think I might become the next Clapton or Hendrix, but for every outlier like that, there are thousands of musicians playing steady gigs on the weekends, loving what they do, and paying a few bills as a result. Finally, the same can be said of authors. And that’s the real story of self-publishing.
Hugh Howey: Self-publishing is the future — and great for writers
Books have changed forever, and that's good. Writers will find readers and make more money going it alone, like me
By Hugh Howey
Salon.com
Apr 4, 2013
Contrary to recent reports, I am not the story of self-publishing.
The story of self-publishing is Jan Strnad, a 62-year-old educator hoping to retire in four years. To do so is going to require supplemental income, which he is currently earning from his self-published novels. In 2012, Jan made $11,406.31 from his work. That’s more than double what he made from the same book in the six months it was available from Kensington, a major publisher. He has since released a second work and now makes around $2,000 a month, even though you’ve never heard of him.
Rachel Schurig has sold 100,000 e-books and made six figures last year. She is the story of self-publishing. Rick Gualtieri cleared over $25,000 in 2012 from his writing. He says it’s like getting a Christmas bonus every month. Amanda Brice is an intellectual property attorney for the federal government. In her spare time, she writes teen mysteries and adult romantic comedies. She averages $750 a month with her work.
Like Schurig, Robert J. Crane is quickly moving from midlist to A-list. When Robert shared his earnings with me late last year, his monthly income had gone from $110.29 in June to $13,000+ in November. He was making more in a month than many debut authors are likely to receive as an advance from a major publisher. And he still owned his rights. His earnings have only gone up since.
Right now you are probably thinking that these anecdotes of self-publishing success are the result of my having cherry-picked the winners. In fact, these stories appear in this exact order in my private message inbox over at Kindle Boards. The only sampling bias is that these writers responded to a thread I started titled: “The Self Published Authors I Want to Hear From.” I wanted to know how many forum members were making $100 to $500 a month. My suspicion was that it was more than any of us realized. Every response I received started with a variation of: “I’m actually making a lot more than that.”
My fascination with this story began back when major media outlets like Entertainment Weekly and Wired magazine called to interview me. Perhaps the transition from near-minimum-wage bookseller to New York Times bestseller was too surreal for me to embrace, but my reaction to these entreaties was that I couldn’t possibly be the real story. For every outlier like myself or Bella Andre or Amanda Hocking, there must be hundreds of people doing well enough with their writing to pay a few bills. The more time I spent online in various writing forums, the more this hunch hardened into a real theory. People I interacted with every day were appearing on bestseller lists or emailing me for advice on handling calls from agents. The hundreds appeared to be thousands. And this could only be a fraction of the actual number.
My call for anecdotes was my first attempt to find data to support this theory. Before I wrote this article, the first thing I did was click on a random page of my private message inbox. I received such a flood from that forum post that any page likely would have worked, and the first one did. I could regale you with hundreds of accounts of publishing success, all from people you’ve never heard of, all making more than most traditionally published authors, and all messaging me within a few hours of my call to arms. The story, I started to realize, was much bigger than I had thought.
Of course, you’ll see articles lamenting the paucity of sales most self-published books enjoy, but there’s a problem with comparing average self-published sales with traditionally published books. In self-publishing, the slush pile is made available to readers. These comparisons between the two paths take the tip of one iceberg (the books that made it through the gauntlet and into bookstores) with an entire iceberg (all self-published books). It’s not a fair comparison.
Another problem with the data that disparages self-publishing is that much of it comes from the age of self-pub authors having to print hundreds of books and warehouse them in their garages. These tales of literary woe will include all the people who simply wrote and published a book to tick off a task on a bucket list. Or those who wanted to share a memoir with family and friends. Or those who only had a single book in them. Or those who gave up after completing that first novel. Or those who chose to write in a genre that has a very limited readership.
I celebrate writing for any of these reasons — I wish more people wrote more often. But what fascinates me as a self-published author are not those who publish a single novel but rather those who approach this as a major hobby, a second job or even a career. Those who take their writing seriously, who publish more than one title a year and do this year after year, are finding real success with their art. They are earning hundreds or thousands of dollars a month. I’ve watched several online friends go from publishing their first books to hitting the New York Times bestseller list. I’ve watched even more get themselves out of debt while pursuing a lifelong dream. There’s a silent mob out there making hundreds of dollars a month while doing something they love, and this should be celebrated.
None of this is meant to say that everyone who self-publishes — even those who study the craft, take their work seriously, and produce a constant stream of material — will find material success. There is also luck involved and the fickle tastes of readers. But what is becoming more apparent with every passing day is that you have a better chance of paying a bill or two through self-publishing than you do through any other means of publication.
Many of you are no doubt wiping beverage spittle off your computer screens right now. Some of you are probably angry at hearing this. You may think that this is post hoc reasoning from one of the people who had success happen to him. Except that I was espousing this view well before my own works took off. It seemed logical to me then, and it seems logical to me now. As soon as the cost of distribution and production both hit zero, the game changed. It just took a while for everyone to realize it (we’re still waiting on a few laggards, but they’ll catch on eventually).
Let’s compare music and literature for a moment. No, not the industries, which are following similar disruptions due to the arrival of the digital age, I mean the people who make music and those who craft literature. Let’s look at the artists.
How many people teach themselves to play the guitar? We celebrate this, don’t we? Even as they go through the callous-building phase, we admire anyone who learns the grammar of chords and then strings these phrases together into music. They begin by playing cover tunes the way an aspiring author might write fan fiction. They go on to strum on the sidewalk with a hat by their feet much like someone might blog and hope for a donation. They play small venues on open-mic nights that we can think of as free books on Smashwords. They get a few paying gigs, which is like self-publishing on Amazon. They hope to gain a following, local at first. Maybe they’ll get invited to open for a bigger act, which would be akin to scoring a blurb from a bestselling author. Perhaps a scout will see them live or on YouTube, like an agent noticing an author on a bestseller list. This is how artists are born. They are self-made. They perform for people. They learn and improve as they do both.
The old route for literary success looks stodgy and outdated by comparison. You write in a vacuum or for a professor who frowns on genre; you workshop with other writers; you craft a query letter; you appeal to the tastes of an intern at a literary agency; you claw your way out of the slush pile; you hope to win over an editor at a major publishing house; your book comes out a year later and sits spine-out on a bookshelf for six months; it gets returned to the publisher and goes out of print; you start over. The general reader is a mile away from you in this process. You never had a chance to be heard by the only people who truly matter.
With self-publishing, you learn your craft while producing material. You win over your fans directly. You own all of your rights, and your works stay fresh and available for your lifetime (and beyond). Nothing goes out of print. I think this advantage is difficult to fully appreciate. My bestselling work was my eighth or ninth title. As soon as it took off, the rest of my material took off with it. To the reader, it was all brand-new. To those being born today who will become avid readers 15 years from now, those works will still be brand-new. My entire oeuvre will always be in print and always earning me something. Nothing is pulled and returned from the digital bookshelf.
Another advantage is price. I recommended a book to readers recently, only to discover that the e-book was priced at $12.99! I can’t believe publishers do this to themselves. But then, they have to worry about competing with their other products. If they price their backlist too low, the fear is that readers will ignore the works currently being promoted. When John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee series came out at $11.99, they lost a customer: Me. At $2.99, I would have purchased every single one of those classics. I doubt I would have actually read them (again), but I would have bought them. They would have competed with nothing; the electrons wouldn’t clutter my house; the price would be impulse territory. It all comes back to the fear that the e-book will cannibalize a print copy or a more recent title. When you self-publish, you care about your work more than anyone else ever will. That means pricing it to gain as many readers as possible.
The twin advantages of price and permanence made it easy for me to walk away from offers from major publishers. Even when those offers soared into the seven figures, there was no chance that I would give up a monthly income for the rest of my life for a one-time payment, especially when that payment meant that in six months, my work would be seen as competition to whatever was newly released. The print-only deal I signed with Simon & Schuster was advantageous because my physical sales, even at thousands of dollars a month, were a fraction of my total self-published earnings. Digital is where it’s at, and even major publishers understand this.
That’s why the self-publishing community shook its collective head over a recent story here on Salon. A professed self-publishing failure turned out not to have an e-book available. Old thinking like this has no place in today’s publishing world. For all the author of that piece knows, his story might find its audience 10 years from now and hit every bestseller list. The chances aren’t great, of course, because he only wrote one novel, gave it mere months to succeed, and chose the medium least suited to discoverability. That’s how it used to work. It no longer has to.
Here’s the reality: How you publish will not significantly affect the quality of your story. If it needs a ton of work, it’s not going to make it out of the slush pile anyway. These days, manuscripts need to be perfect before they’re submitted to agents or before you self-publish, so don’t fool yourself into thinking a rough draft can become a great novel with the help of an agent or editor. It’s simply not likely to happen. Your book will be your book no matter what path you take. It won’t suddenly be horrible because you self-publish it, and it won’t be amazing just because some agent or editor seems to think so. It will need to prove itself to readers one way or the other, whichever path you take.
There are two possibilities. Your book might be in the top 1 percent of what readers are looking for — whether by the magic of your plot or the grace of your prose — in which case you are far better off self-publishing. You’ll make more money sooner, and you’ll own the rights when it comes time to negotiate with publishers (if you even care to). If, on the other hand, your work isn’t in the top 1 percent, it won’t escape the clutches of the slush pile. Your only hope in this case is to self-publish. Which means there isn’t a scenario in which I would recommend an author begin his or her career with a traditional publisher. Not a one. Even Jim Carrey is going the self-pub route with his children’s book, and he’ll make a mint because of it. The new top-down approach is to self-publish and retain ownership. The course of last resort would be to sign away your rights for the rest of your life.
Louis C.K. proved this for comedy. The better you are, the better it pays to produce and own your own work. If you’re not on that level, producing it yourself is the only option. Only option or best option. It’s that simple.
“But I only want to write,” you might say. “I don’t want to be a publisher.” Well, good luck. Even if you land with a major publishing house, the success of your work will depend on you knowing this business and embracing all the challenges that a self-published author faces. There are only a handful of authors in the world who can make a living writing and passing along those words to someone else and not doing a single other thing. Most people who attempt this method teach creative writing for a living, and not because they want to. Promotion will be up to you. Your publisher will want to see your social media presence before they offer you a book deal. Learning the ins and outs of self-publishing before signing with a major house is the best training imaginable. Not doing so would be like a hopeful race car driver not caring what’s under the hood. I’ve been shocked to discover, having worked with major publishers, that many of my self-published friends know more about the current publishing landscape than industry veterans with decades of experience. The more you learn and the more you keep an open mind, the better your chances for success.
The rest of this story will be written in the coming years. It is early yet, but I predict that more and more people will find success by self-publishing first and proving themselves to small audiences. They will follow the route of other artists who work their way up from small beginnings rather than hoping to blow it out on their first attempt on the stage. I’ve already heard from authors who gave up on self-publishing only to have their still-available works bloom years later and earn them real money. Some books will be like locusts, emerging by some fickle whim long after they were forgotten. What will matter for those books and those authors will be that the work was created and made available, and neither of those feats will expire.
Aspiring authors email me all the time asking for advice, and I tell them the same thing: I found success because I wrote for the love of writing. I self-published simply because I wanted to own my work and I wanted to make it available to readers. I expected nothing. I wrote as one might garden or knit, simply because they enjoy the act of creation. The fact that I pay my bills — a feat growing more and more common by the day — is an unexpected bonus. I’d be doing this on the street with a hat by my feet if I had to. I’d be building callouses and nodding my thanks to anyone who tossed a coin my way. Sure, it would be crazy to think I might become the next Clapton or Hendrix, but for every outlier like that, there are thousands of musicians playing steady gigs on the weekends, loving what they do, and paying a few bills as a result. Finally, the same can be said of authors. And that’s the real story of self-publishing.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Jan Caldwell of San Diego Sheriff's Dept. disses bloggers because they "could be" 800-pound disabled men wearing fuzzy slippers, working at home on an Apple laptop
My favorite part of the following article is when VOSD's Kelly Bennett confesses to working at home on her Apple Laptop wearing slippers.
Ms. Jan Caldwell
Public Affairs Director
858-974-2052
Sheriff's Department: No Shoes, No Fancy Degree, No Service
Feb 22, 2013
by Sara Libby
Voice of San Diego
By Jan Caldwell's standards, I am a Very Serious Journalist.
This has very little to do with the fact that I run a news publication.
It has more to do with the fact that I'm nice (almost always), svelte, not disabled and have a fancy journalism school degree. Oh, one more thing: As a Very Serious Journalist, I always wear Very Serious Footwear.
Caldwell, the spokeswoman for the San Diego Sheriff's Department, spoke earlier this week at an event called Grade the Media, put on by the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional journalists. (I didn't attend the event — I caught Caldwell's remarks on YouTube.)
There, she warned reporters of her No. 1 rule if they want to get information about the county's chief law enforcement agency: "My first point I want to make is: Be nice to me. I mean, seriously, be nice to me. Because I'm a mirror, and I will reflect how you treat me. If you are rude, if you are obnoxious, if you are demanding, if you call me a liar, I will probably not talk to you anymore."
Golden rule, got it. There's something a little unsettling about someone sternly ordering niceness and demanding that reporters not demand. But taken at face value, those aren't unreasonable requests.
Then Caldwell takes a turn. She says that it's time to revisit the issue of journalist credentials, because "you can sit with your Apple laptop in your fuzzy slippers, you can be an 800-pound, disabled man that can't get out of bed and be a journalist, because you can blog something. Does that give you the right, because you blog, in your fuzzy slippers out of your bedroom, and you don't go out and you haven't gotten that degree, should you be called a journalist?"
Disregard the fact that Caldwell went from insisting on niceness to vilifying the obese and the disabled in the next breath.
The stereotype of bloggers as slovenly basement dwellers is incredibly antiquated. Seriously, people were complaining about how antiquated it was years ago.
Bloggers rule the world. The New Republic wrote this month that blogger extraordinaire Ezra Klein's Wonkblog has, "arguably become the [Washington] Post’s most successful project, bringing in over four million page views every month."
But blogs that aren't hosted by the Washington Post are still perfectly legitimate. It's the journalism that's produced — how it's presented, the service it performs — that matters.
Voice of San Diego itself, by virtue of being an online-only venture, is probably considered a blog by some people. Kelly Bennett has admitted to occasionally wearing slippers while working from home. On her Apple laptop.
And though Caldwell described bloggers with by far the most disdain, she wasn't alone on the panel in expressing old-school notions of the media.
Darren Pudgil, who served as spokesman for former Mayor Jerry Sanders, said he too is very discerning about who he gives information to.
"We look at the entity. What type of audience does a media outlet have? What type of reach do they have? … Most of the bloggers are a little out there, and aren't informed and have agendas," Pudgil said.
I may be a Very Serious Journalist, but I think I'm missing something.
Even if there are thousands of these elusive, basement-dwelling, slippers-sporting, uninformed bloggers beating down the doors of local public affairs officers (I mean metaphorically, of course, you can't beat down doors in slippers and without leaving the basement), wouldn't they be precisely the people whose writing would be improved with the help of a robust, accurate source of information from their government?
This database lists the position of "public affairs officer, sheriff" for the County of San Diego at an annual salary of $68,640 to $131,040. If the county is paying someone upward of $130,000 to disseminate information, he or she should feel obligated to answer anyone with a notepad and an earnest question (asked nicely), whether they live in a basement, a mansion or a storm drain.
Caldwell and Pudgil aren't the first to confuse legitimate, journalism-performing bloggers with the rest of the vast, amorphous, anonymous internet. But given that they communicate with the press for a living, you'd think they'd have a better idea of who the press is.
I asked a few of my Very Serious Journalist friends what they thought made someone a Very Serious Journalist.
One, a journalism fellow at Harvard, said his criteria included "curiosity, tenacity and skepticism. … I think serious journalists must have a sense of civic duty and believe that their work serves the public interest."...
Ms. Jan Caldwell
Public Affairs Director
858-974-2052
Sheriff's Department: No Shoes, No Fancy Degree, No Service
Feb 22, 2013
by Sara Libby
Voice of San Diego
By Jan Caldwell's standards, I am a Very Serious Journalist.
This has very little to do with the fact that I run a news publication.
It has more to do with the fact that I'm nice (almost always), svelte, not disabled and have a fancy journalism school degree. Oh, one more thing: As a Very Serious Journalist, I always wear Very Serious Footwear.
Caldwell, the spokeswoman for the San Diego Sheriff's Department, spoke earlier this week at an event called Grade the Media, put on by the San Diego chapter of the Society of Professional journalists. (I didn't attend the event — I caught Caldwell's remarks on YouTube.)
There, she warned reporters of her No. 1 rule if they want to get information about the county's chief law enforcement agency: "My first point I want to make is: Be nice to me. I mean, seriously, be nice to me. Because I'm a mirror, and I will reflect how you treat me. If you are rude, if you are obnoxious, if you are demanding, if you call me a liar, I will probably not talk to you anymore."
Golden rule, got it. There's something a little unsettling about someone sternly ordering niceness and demanding that reporters not demand. But taken at face value, those aren't unreasonable requests.
Then Caldwell takes a turn. She says that it's time to revisit the issue of journalist credentials, because "you can sit with your Apple laptop in your fuzzy slippers, you can be an 800-pound, disabled man that can't get out of bed and be a journalist, because you can blog something. Does that give you the right, because you blog, in your fuzzy slippers out of your bedroom, and you don't go out and you haven't gotten that degree, should you be called a journalist?"
Disregard the fact that Caldwell went from insisting on niceness to vilifying the obese and the disabled in the next breath.
The stereotype of bloggers as slovenly basement dwellers is incredibly antiquated. Seriously, people were complaining about how antiquated it was years ago.
Bloggers rule the world. The New Republic wrote this month that blogger extraordinaire Ezra Klein's Wonkblog has, "arguably become the [Washington] Post’s most successful project, bringing in over four million page views every month."
But blogs that aren't hosted by the Washington Post are still perfectly legitimate. It's the journalism that's produced — how it's presented, the service it performs — that matters.
Voice of San Diego itself, by virtue of being an online-only venture, is probably considered a blog by some people. Kelly Bennett has admitted to occasionally wearing slippers while working from home. On her Apple laptop.
And though Caldwell described bloggers with by far the most disdain, she wasn't alone on the panel in expressing old-school notions of the media.
Darren Pudgil, who served as spokesman for former Mayor Jerry Sanders, said he too is very discerning about who he gives information to.
"We look at the entity. What type of audience does a media outlet have? What type of reach do they have? … Most of the bloggers are a little out there, and aren't informed and have agendas," Pudgil said.
I may be a Very Serious Journalist, but I think I'm missing something.
Even if there are thousands of these elusive, basement-dwelling, slippers-sporting, uninformed bloggers beating down the doors of local public affairs officers (I mean metaphorically, of course, you can't beat down doors in slippers and without leaving the basement), wouldn't they be precisely the people whose writing would be improved with the help of a robust, accurate source of information from their government?
This database lists the position of "public affairs officer, sheriff" for the County of San Diego at an annual salary of $68,640 to $131,040. If the county is paying someone upward of $130,000 to disseminate information, he or she should feel obligated to answer anyone with a notepad and an earnest question (asked nicely), whether they live in a basement, a mansion or a storm drain.
Caldwell and Pudgil aren't the first to confuse legitimate, journalism-performing bloggers with the rest of the vast, amorphous, anonymous internet. But given that they communicate with the press for a living, you'd think they'd have a better idea of who the press is.
I asked a few of my Very Serious Journalist friends what they thought made someone a Very Serious Journalist.
One, a journalism fellow at Harvard, said his criteria included "curiosity, tenacity and skepticism. … I think serious journalists must have a sense of civic duty and believe that their work serves the public interest."...
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Love letter from Gil Cabrera to Voice of San Diego
A love letter filters down to us from the infatuation between Gil Cabrera and Voice of San Diego.
Monday, January 14, 2013
UT Lite: Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and yet another news organization in San Diego: Investigative Newsource
The San Diego Union-Tribune's Doug Manchester isn't the only guy in San Diego who is willing to pony up lots of money to influence opinion. Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs are definitely less rabid than Manchester. They fund a "UT Lite" version of the news at Voice of San Diego and Investigative Newsource. However, all three news outlets conceal pretty much the same stuff.
Bob and Buzz
By Matt Potter
San Diego Reader
Jan. 9, 2013
Investigative Newsource, San Diego’s smallest nonprofit online-news operation, managed to grow its cash a bit in 2011, according to an annual charitable disclosure report filed in August with the Internal Revenue Service and recently posted online by Guidestar.Org. Newsource was put together by former Union-Tribune editor Karin Winner and her close friend and ex-U-T coworker Lorie Hearn during one of many rounds of staff cuts made by then-U-T owner Platinum Equity.
Housed in a small free office at San Diego State University, it became most famous last year for going after then-Democratic congressman Bob Filner over assertions he made in an interview that San Diego’s port had “zero commerce.”...Some Filner backers later said the mayoral candidate had been engaging in a bit of rhetorical hyperbole [Maura Larkins comment: that's pretty obvious] and claimed bias on the part of the two former U-T journalists and the TV station, whose multimillion-dollar high-tech newsroom was paid for by and is named after Qualcomm billionaire Irwin Jacobs. The influential La Jollan ended up backing GOP city councilman Carl DeMaio against Filner in the mayor’s race.
According to its IRS filing, Newsource took in $381,800 in contributions and grants in 2011. (Federal law does not require disclosure of the source of the cash.) That was up from 2010, when the nonprofit received $214,800 from unnamed donors. [I wonder who the donors are. Hmmm. Let me guess.] Newsource ended the year with assets and fund balances of $227,577, the report says. Salaries, other compensation, and employee benefits totaled $212,956. The disclosure says that no one at the organization got more than $100,000 in compensation.
A section on the form for listing compensation of “Officers Directors, Trustees , Key Employees, and Highest Compensated Employees” is blank.
Hearn didn’t respond to a request for more information left at her office.
As president of the board, Winner, who works for free (according to the disclosure), is reported to put in 15 hours a week. Other board members include Mary Walshok, the UCSD extension honcho with many other local connections who is also on the board of La Jolla’s Girard Foundation, the nonprofit run by Voice of San Diego founder R.B. “Buzz” Woolley, where she has been paid $5000 a year for her service, disclosures have shown.
Saturday, January 05, 2013
Freelance journalist and American News sue San Diego Police Department for refusing press credentials
Unfortunately, stopping the practice of issuing credentials will not solve the problem of fair access for journalists. The police can still throw people out of press conferences and other news sites if they don't like their reporting.
Cops want press credential lawsuit dismissed
Dana Littlefield
NCT
January 5, 2013
SAN DIEGO — A federal judge is considering requests by the San Diego Police and county Sheriff’s departments to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two freelance journalists who claim the agencies unfairly prevented them from gathering news.
The lawsuit was filed in September on behalf of James “J.C.” Playford, a freelance photojournalist and videographer from Ramona, and Edward Peruta, owner of Connecticut-based American News and Information Services.
In it, they claim the law enforcement agencies tried to censor Playford, who files information to American News, by threatening to arrest him, taking his cameras and denying him a press credential. They also contend that by issuing the only press credentials recognized by law enforcement throughout the county, the Police Department is unfairly designating which news services receive “the most up-to-date and reliable information.”
San Diego Police Chief Bill Landsdowne has said that the press passes allow the media to get close to crime scenes and gain access to news conferences while maintaining order and preventing other citizens from interfering with investigations.
But Lansdowne said the credentialing process could use an update. He also said the department is considering whether to get out of the credentialing business.
Last week, he said the matter is on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department announced last month it was discontinuing the issuing of credentials to members of the news media.
Department officials said in a statement that “with the advancement in digital media and the proliferation of bloggers, podcasters and freelancers, it has become challenging to determine who should receive a press pass.”
Cops want press credential lawsuit dismissed
Dana Littlefield
NCT
January 5, 2013
SAN DIEGO — A federal judge is considering requests by the San Diego Police and county Sheriff’s departments to dismiss a lawsuit filed by two freelance journalists who claim the agencies unfairly prevented them from gathering news.
The lawsuit was filed in September on behalf of James “J.C.” Playford, a freelance photojournalist and videographer from Ramona, and Edward Peruta, owner of Connecticut-based American News and Information Services.
In it, they claim the law enforcement agencies tried to censor Playford, who files information to American News, by threatening to arrest him, taking his cameras and denying him a press credential. They also contend that by issuing the only press credentials recognized by law enforcement throughout the county, the Police Department is unfairly designating which news services receive “the most up-to-date and reliable information.”
San Diego Police Chief Bill Landsdowne has said that the press passes allow the media to get close to crime scenes and gain access to news conferences while maintaining order and preventing other citizens from interfering with investigations.
But Lansdowne said the credentialing process could use an update. He also said the department is considering whether to get out of the credentialing business.
Last week, he said the matter is on hold pending the outcome of the lawsuit.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department announced last month it was discontinuing the issuing of credentials to members of the news media.
Department officials said in a statement that “with the advancement in digital media and the proliferation of bloggers, podcasters and freelancers, it has become challenging to determine who should receive a press pass.”
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The other Petraeus scandal: his recorded discussion with Fox News about creating an unfair and unbalanced campaign
Why the US media ignored Murdoch's brazen bid to hijack the presidency
Carl Bernstein
The Guardian
20 December 2012
Did the Washington Post and others underplay the story through fear of the News Corp chairman, or simply tin-eared judgment?
The Ailes/Petraeus tape made clear to many that Murdoch's goals in America have always been nefarious.
So now we have it: what appears to be hard, irrefutable evidence of Rupert Murdoch's ultimate and most audacious attempt – thwarted, thankfully, by circumstance – to hijack America's democratic institutions on a scale equal to his success in kidnapping and corrupting the essential democratic institutions of Great Britain through money, influence and wholesale abuse of the privileges of a free press.
In the American instance, Murdoch's goal seems to have been nothing less than using his media empire – notably Fox News – to stealthily recruit, bankroll and support the presidential candidacy of General David Petraeus in the 2012 election.
Thus in the spring of 2011 – less than 10 weeks before Murdoch's centrality to the hacking and politician-buying scandal enveloping his British newspapers was definitively revealed – Fox News' inventor and president, Roger Ailes, dispatched an emissary to Afghanistan to urge Petraeus to turn down President Obama's expected offer to become CIA director and, instead, run for the Republican nomination for president, with promises of being bankrolled by Murdoch. Ailes himself would resign as president of Fox News and run the campaign, according to the conversation between Petraeus and the emissary, K T McFarland, a Fox News on-air defense "analyst" and former spear carrier for national security principals in three Republican administrations.
All this was revealed in a tape recording of Petraeus's meeting with McFarland obtained by Bob Woodward, whose account of their discussion, accompanied online by audio of the tape, was published in the Washington Post – distressingly, in its style section, and not on page one, where it belonged – and, under the style logo, online on December 3.
Indeed, almost as dismaying as Ailes' and Murdoch's disdain for an independent and truly free and honest press, and as remarkable as the obsequious eagerness of their messenger to convey their extraordinary presidential draft and promise of on-air Fox support to Petraeus, has been the ho-hum response to the story by the American press and the country's political establishment, whether out of fear of Murdoch, Ailes and Fox – or, perhaps, lack of surprise at Murdoch's, Ailes' and Fox's contempt for decent journalistic values or a transparent electoral process.
The tone of the media's reaction was set from the beginning by the Post's own tin-eared treatment of this huge story: relegating it, like any other juicy tidbit of inside-the-beltway media gossip, to the section of the newspaper and its website that focuses on entertainment, gossip, cultural and personality-driven news, instead of the front page.
"Bob had a great scoop, a buzzy media story that made it perfect for Style. It didn't have the broader import that would justify A1," Liz Spayd, the Post's managing editor, told Politico when asked why the story appeared in the style section.
Buzzy media story? Lacking the "broader import" of a front-page story? One cannot imagine such a failure of news judgment among any of Spayd's modern predecessors as managing editors of the Post, especially in the clear light of the next day and with a tape recording – of the highest audio quality – in hand.
"Tell [Ailes] if I ever ran," Petraeus announces on the crystal-clear digital recording and then laughs, "but I won't … but if I ever ran, I'd take him up on his offer. … He said he would quit Fox … and bankroll it."
McFarland clarified the terms: "The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger's going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house" – thereby confirming what Fox New critics have consistently maintained about the network's faux-news agenda and its built-in ideological bias.
And here let us posit the following: were an emissary of the president of NBC News, or of the editor of the New York Times or the Washington Post ever caught on tape promising what Ailes and Murdoch had apparently suggested and offered here, the hue and cry, especially from Fox News and Republican/Tea Party America, from the Congress to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, would be deafening and not be subdued until there was a congressional investigation, and the resignations were in hand of the editor and publisher of the network or newspaper. Or until there had been plausible and convincing evidence that the most important elements of the story were false. And, of course, the story would continue day after day on page one and remain near the top of the evening news for weeks, until every ounce of (justifiable) piety about freedom of the press and unfettered presidential elections had been exhausted.
The tape of Petraeus and McFarland's conversation is an amazing document, a testament to the willingness of Murdoch and the wily genius he hired to create Fox News to run roughshod over the American civic and political landscape without regard to even the traditional niceties or pretenses of journalistic independence and honesty. Like the revelations of the hacking scandal, which established beyond any doubt Murdoch's ability to capture and corrupt the three essential elements of the British civic compact – the press, politicians and police – the Ailes/Petraeus tape makes clear that Murdoch's goals in America have always been just as ambitious, insidious and nefarious.
The digital recording, and the dead-serious conspiratorial conversation it captures so chillingly in tone and substance ("I'm only reporting this back to Roger. And that's our deal," McFarland assured Petraeus as she unfolded the offer) utterly refutes Ailes' disingenuous dismissal of what he and Murdoch were actually attempting: the buying of the presidency...
Happily, Petraeus was not hungering for the presidency at the moment of the messenger's arrival: the general was contented at the idea of being CIA director, which Ailes was urging him to forgo.
"We're all set," said the emissary, referring to Ailes, Murdoch and Fox. "It's never going to happen," Petraeus said. "You know it's never going to happen. It really isn't. … My wife would divorce me."
Friday, November 09, 2012
News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
News of the World's Former Top Lawyer Arrested
August 30, 2012
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
LONDON—British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.
A call to Mr. Crone went unanswered mid-day Thursday.
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter.
August 30, 2012
By PAUL SONNE And CASSELL BRYAN-LOW
Wall Street Journal
LONDON—British police on Thursday arrested the former top lawyer at News Corp.'s News of the World tabloid on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, a person with knowledge of the matter said, marking one of the most high-profile arrests in a continuing police probe into wrongdoing at the shuttered tabloid.
London's Metropolitan Police confirmed Thursday that officers investigating illegal voicemail interception at the News of the World had arrested a 60-year-old man and brought him in for questioning at a South London police station, but the force declined to identify the suspect.
A person with knowledge of the situation, however, identified the person as Tom Crone, the lawyer who served as the News of the World's in-house counsel for more than 25 years until News Corp. closed the weekly tabloid at the apex of the phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.
A call to Mr. Crone went unanswered mid-day Thursday.
The 60-year-old lawyer became one of the phone-hacking saga's most visible figures last year when he and former News of the World editor Colin Myler broke ranks with their former employer to dispute an element of News Corp. executive James Murdoch's testimony to a parliamentary committee.
Messrs. Crone and Myler said they had informed Mr. Murdoch in 2008 of a controversial email whose contents suggested the practice of hacking mobile-phone voicemails went beyond what the company had initially admitted. But Mr. Murdoch said he hadn't been informed of the email's contents at the time and learned the scope of the wrongdoing at the paper only in late 2010, a position he reiterated upon further questioning.
A spokeswoman for News International, the U.K. newspaper unit of News Corp., declined to comment on Thursday's arrest. She didn't say whether the company is paying Mr. Crone's legal bills. News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Crone was a veteran lawyer on Fleet Street. He often vetted the News of the World's raciest stories ahead of publication and went to court to defend the paper against high-profile libel claims brought by celebrities.
The longtime News of the World lawyer was one of three people the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee censured in a May report for misleading Parliament during hearings on the phone-hacking matter.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
U-T San Diego publishes misleading article about Del Mar Schools, Sharon McClain and Daniel Shinoff
Here is the false and misleading article published by the Union-Tribune. This lawsuit is most definitely NOT settled. There was a trial verdict on October 3, 2012, but no settlement. The case is quite likely headed to the Court of Appeal. Why would anyone want the public to believe it was settled? I have some ideas about that.
Suit settled in favor of former Del Mar Superintendent
Lyndsay Winkley
U-T San Diego
Oct. 9, 2012
A lawsuit between Del Mar school’s former Superintendent Sharon McClain and the district was settled last week in McClain’s favor after more than two years of legal battle.
Superior Court Judge John Meyer ordered the Del Mar Union School District to pay $388,537 plus about $30,000 in interest after ruling McClain was wrongfully terminated.
Board members did not talk specifics about McClain’s termination throughout the legal proceedings, citing the lawsuit, but a negative performance evaluation from McClain’s tenure was submitted as support for the district’s position during the case.
“You are openly hostile to the current Board President, you complain to Board members about other Board members, and you complain to District staff about the Board,” the evaluation said. “You have positioned yourself as fighting against the Board instead of being part of a governance team.”
McClain submitted a rebuttal saying she felt the board was committed to finding problems with her performance to fire her.
Trustees voted to oust McClain at a March 2010 board meeting, called only two days prior. Still, the board room was packed with parents, and all speakers, nearly 30, supported McClain. In a 3-1-1 vote, she was fired.
Two current trustees took part in the 2010 vote. Trustee Doug Perkins voted in favor of firing McClain, while Trustee Comischell Rodriguez opposed it. Neither responded to emails Tuesday for comment. McClain also did not respond to emails for comment.
Del Mar’s school district has spent more than $700,000 in the last four years on settlements for two superintendents.
[Maura Larkins comment: This statement is false, since not one cent has been paid in any settlement with Sharon McClain, and the district has NO plan to settle with McClain. More importantly, this article fails to tell us how much the district spent on three full-time lawyers during the trial, and for two years of depositions and motions preceding the trial.]
The board bought out Tom Bishop’s contract for more than $300,000 in 2008. McClain was hired in summer 2008.
Current Superintendent Holly McClurg is the fourth to hold the position in four years, following former Superintendent James Peabody, who retired in June.
THE BIZARRE REPORTING OF U-T SAN DIEGO
On October 9, 2012 I added the following to my own blog post about the Sharon McClain trial: "To its shame, U-T San Diego has not reported on the trial outcome in this case, although it published the details of the district's criticisms of McClain."
Later that day, at 6:28 p.m., U-T San Diego published the bizarre and false headline, "Suit settled in favor of former Del Mar Superintendent."
But this lawsuit is most definitely NOT settled. There was a trial verdict, but no settlement. The case is quite likely headed to the Court of Appeal. Why would anyone want the public to believe it was settled?
I think the answer is clear. Many people claimed that the district would settle to avoid paying huge amounts to lawyers. The opposite is true. The system is set up so that lawyers, rather than wronged employees and students, receive the largesse of school insurer SDCOE-JPA (San Diego County Office of Education). SDCOE's Diane Crosier used to work in Dan Shinoff's law firm, and Mr. Shinoff was involved in hiring Ms. Crosier at SDCOE.
A reasonable person would conclude that the court had actually overseen a settlement of the case. The word "trial" does not occur anywhere in the U-T article. The article refers to "legal proceedings" and mentions the name of the judge, and includes a recitation of board complaints against McClain.
The name of Dan Shinoff is entirely missing from the U-T article. Interestingly, the Union-Tribune completely failed to cover the sexual harassment lawsuit that Mr. Shinoff lost on behalf of his long-time client Patrick Judd, former superintendent of Mountain Empire Unified School District and former board member of CVESD, although the Union-Tribune had endorsed Mr. Judd repeatedly.
Here's the comment I posted on the U-T article:
There was a trial, not a settlement, in this case.
This article states: "Del Mar’s school district has spent more than $700,000 in the last four years on settlements for two superintendents."
This statement is false, since not one cent has been paid in any settlement with Sharon McClain, and the district has NO plan to settle with McClain.
More importantly, this article fails to tell us how much the district spent on three full-time lawyers during the trial, and for two years of depositions and motions preceding the trial.
Obviously, the district should have settled with McClain in the beginning.
U-T San Diego leadership:
Douglas F. Manchester Chairman & Publisher
John T. Lynch Vice Chairman & CEO john.lynch@utsandiego.com
Mike Hodges President & Chief Operating Officer mike.hodges@utsandiego.com 619-293-1104
Jeff Light Editor, Vice President jeff.light@utsandiego.com 619-293-1201
Joe Brenneman Chief Revenue Officer joe.brenneman@utsandiego.com 619-293-1500
Mike Glickenhaus Vice President, Strategic Sales mike.glickenhaus@utsandiego.com 619-293-2161
Dan Hellbusch Vice President, Audience/Business Development & Strategic Partnerships dan.hellbusch@utsandiego.com 619-718-1484
Tom Jimenez Vice President, Spanish-Language products tom.jimenez@utsandiego.com 619-293-1568
Ryan Kiesel Vice President, Chief Financial Officer ryan.kiesel@utsandiego.com 619-293-1117
Kris Viesselman Vice President, Product Development & Chief Creative Officer kris.viesselman@utsandiego.com 619-293-2235
Harry Woldt Vice President, Circulation & Distribution harry.woldt@utsandiego.com 619-293-1601
Opinion
Steve Breen Editorial cartoonist steve.breen@utsandiego.com 619-293-1230
U-T San Diego Editorial Board 619-293-1395
Blanca Gonzalez Community opinion editor blanca.gonzalez@utsandiego.com 619-293-1241
William Osborne Editorial editor bill.osborne@utsandiego.com 619-293-1395
Chris Reed Editorial writer chris.reed@utsandiego.com 619-293-1511
Joe Taylor Letters editor joe.taylor@utsandiego.com 619-293-1789
[It looks like Don Sevrens, who hid the truth about Castle Park Elementary School as he was publishing hysterical stories and letters, is gone. It's not much of a loss for education reporting.]
SADLY, THE NORTH COUNTY TIMES HAS BEEN BOUGHT BY THE OWNER OF THE U-T.
We are close to having a newspaper monopoly in San Diego.
For years, the North County Times has done a good job reporting on schools. It seems that this is changing since the NCT was recently purchased by Doug Manchester, owner of U-T San Diego.
Suit settled in favor of former Del Mar Superintendent
Lyndsay Winkley
U-T San Diego
Oct. 9, 2012
A lawsuit between Del Mar school’s former Superintendent Sharon McClain and the district was settled last week in McClain’s favor after more than two years of legal battle.
Superior Court Judge John Meyer ordered the Del Mar Union School District to pay $388,537 plus about $30,000 in interest after ruling McClain was wrongfully terminated.
Board members did not talk specifics about McClain’s termination throughout the legal proceedings, citing the lawsuit, but a negative performance evaluation from McClain’s tenure was submitted as support for the district’s position during the case.
“You are openly hostile to the current Board President, you complain to Board members about other Board members, and you complain to District staff about the Board,” the evaluation said. “You have positioned yourself as fighting against the Board instead of being part of a governance team.”
McClain submitted a rebuttal saying she felt the board was committed to finding problems with her performance to fire her.
Trustees voted to oust McClain at a March 2010 board meeting, called only two days prior. Still, the board room was packed with parents, and all speakers, nearly 30, supported McClain. In a 3-1-1 vote, she was fired.
Two current trustees took part in the 2010 vote. Trustee Doug Perkins voted in favor of firing McClain, while Trustee Comischell Rodriguez opposed it. Neither responded to emails Tuesday for comment. McClain also did not respond to emails for comment.
Del Mar’s school district has spent more than $700,000 in the last four years on settlements for two superintendents.
[Maura Larkins comment: This statement is false, since not one cent has been paid in any settlement with Sharon McClain, and the district has NO plan to settle with McClain. More importantly, this article fails to tell us how much the district spent on three full-time lawyers during the trial, and for two years of depositions and motions preceding the trial.]
The board bought out Tom Bishop’s contract for more than $300,000 in 2008. McClain was hired in summer 2008.
Current Superintendent Holly McClurg is the fourth to hold the position in four years, following former Superintendent James Peabody, who retired in June.
THE BIZARRE REPORTING OF U-T SAN DIEGO
On October 9, 2012 I added the following to my own blog post about the Sharon McClain trial: "To its shame, U-T San Diego has not reported on the trial outcome in this case, although it published the details of the district's criticisms of McClain."
Later that day, at 6:28 p.m., U-T San Diego published the bizarre and false headline, "Suit settled in favor of former Del Mar Superintendent."
But this lawsuit is most definitely NOT settled. There was a trial verdict, but no settlement. The case is quite likely headed to the Court of Appeal. Why would anyone want the public to believe it was settled?
I think the answer is clear. Many people claimed that the district would settle to avoid paying huge amounts to lawyers. The opposite is true. The system is set up so that lawyers, rather than wronged employees and students, receive the largesse of school insurer SDCOE-JPA (San Diego County Office of Education). SDCOE's Diane Crosier used to work in Dan Shinoff's law firm, and Mr. Shinoff was involved in hiring Ms. Crosier at SDCOE.
A reasonable person would conclude that the court had actually overseen a settlement of the case. The word "trial" does not occur anywhere in the U-T article. The article refers to "legal proceedings" and mentions the name of the judge, and includes a recitation of board complaints against McClain.
The name of Dan Shinoff is entirely missing from the U-T article. Interestingly, the Union-Tribune completely failed to cover the sexual harassment lawsuit that Mr. Shinoff lost on behalf of his long-time client Patrick Judd, former superintendent of Mountain Empire Unified School District and former board member of CVESD, although the Union-Tribune had endorsed Mr. Judd repeatedly.
Here's the comment I posted on the U-T article:
There was a trial, not a settlement, in this case.
This article states: "Del Mar’s school district has spent more than $700,000 in the last four years on settlements for two superintendents."
This statement is false, since not one cent has been paid in any settlement with Sharon McClain, and the district has NO plan to settle with McClain.
More importantly, this article fails to tell us how much the district spent on three full-time lawyers during the trial, and for two years of depositions and motions preceding the trial.
Obviously, the district should have settled with McClain in the beginning.
U-T San Diego leadership:
Douglas F. Manchester Chairman & Publisher
John T. Lynch Vice Chairman & CEO john.lynch@utsandiego.com
Mike Hodges President & Chief Operating Officer mike.hodges@utsandiego.com 619-293-1104
Jeff Light Editor, Vice President jeff.light@utsandiego.com 619-293-1201
Joe Brenneman Chief Revenue Officer joe.brenneman@utsandiego.com 619-293-1500
Mike Glickenhaus Vice President, Strategic Sales mike.glickenhaus@utsandiego.com 619-293-2161
Dan Hellbusch Vice President, Audience/Business Development & Strategic Partnerships dan.hellbusch@utsandiego.com 619-718-1484
Tom Jimenez Vice President, Spanish-Language products tom.jimenez@utsandiego.com 619-293-1568
Ryan Kiesel Vice President, Chief Financial Officer ryan.kiesel@utsandiego.com 619-293-1117
Kris Viesselman Vice President, Product Development & Chief Creative Officer kris.viesselman@utsandiego.com 619-293-2235
Harry Woldt Vice President, Circulation & Distribution harry.woldt@utsandiego.com 619-293-1601
Opinion
Steve Breen Editorial cartoonist steve.breen@utsandiego.com 619-293-1230
U-T San Diego Editorial Board 619-293-1395
Blanca Gonzalez Community opinion editor blanca.gonzalez@utsandiego.com 619-293-1241
William Osborne Editorial editor bill.osborne@utsandiego.com 619-293-1395
Chris Reed Editorial writer chris.reed@utsandiego.com 619-293-1511
Joe Taylor Letters editor joe.taylor@utsandiego.com 619-293-1789
[It looks like Don Sevrens, who hid the truth about Castle Park Elementary School as he was publishing hysterical stories and letters, is gone. It's not much of a loss for education reporting.]
SADLY, THE NORTH COUNTY TIMES HAS BEEN BOUGHT BY THE OWNER OF THE U-T.
We are close to having a newspaper monopoly in San Diego.
For years, the North County Times has done a good job reporting on schools. It seems that this is changing since the NCT was recently purchased by Doug Manchester, owner of U-T San Diego.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Who is exposing the underbellies of school systems, U-T San Diego or Voice of San Diego?
My challenge to Will Carless at VOSD and Jeff McDonald at U-T San Diego:
Why don't you find out the truth about what's going on at SDCOE?
Now that Will Carless has replaced Emily Alpert at VOSD, why doesn't he conduct a "Crosier Watch" similar to the "Petty Watch" he conducted in 2008?
Over the past few years, only a few limited stories about the tactics of education attorneys have crept into the press. Reporters have to beg and plead and practically stand on their heads to get their stories published. Voice of San Diego dropped its coverage of SDCOE attorney shenanigans, and laid-off its stellar education reporter Emily Alpert. CEO Scott Lewis claimed that he didn't have enough money to pay her.
But that explanation doesn't hold water.
Voice of San Diego benefactors Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs, who claim to care about education, could have easily paid Emily's salary with their pocket change if they'd wanted her to stay. And I suspect she would have wanted to stay if her job description had been made more appealing, which would have included being allowed to publish her stories freely. At one time she must have hoped that all her work would result in some changes for children in schools.
It seems Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Emily Alpert weren't on the same page.
I recently discovered (in a story by Jeff McDonald at the U-T) that SDCOE executive Dan Puplava, whom Emily had started investigating, was fined $7000 and had his brokers license suspended while AIG Financial, which was paying Puplava big bucks for moonlighting with them, was fined $300,000 for not properly overseeing him. Still, Puplava retains his job as head of the SDCOE Fringe Benefits Consortium.
Voice of San Diego never even placed a link in its Morning Report to the U-T San Diego story.
To its credit, VOSD's Will Carless is doing a great job investigating a school bond scam in Poway pulled off by board members and their lawyers.
But if VOSD had been willing to aggressively investigate education attorneys, the Poway Capital Appreciation Bonds scandal might have been prevented. Of course, the downside of that for VOSD would be that it wouldn't have an exciting school bond story to write about.
It seems that journalists are a bit like Plaintiff lawyers: they actually benefit from corruption and wrongdoing because investigation it gets them money and fame.
All along, of course, the school attorneys are making work for themselves by advising school boards to ignore the law.
But the public doesn't hear much about this.
In fact, even private bloggers like me and Scott Dauenhaur get sued by SDCOE lawyer Dan Shinoff for defamation on behalf of himself and his pals at SDCOE. SDCOE should stop tax dollars to stop public discussion of school attorney tactics, but it won't.
Shockingly, it seems that U-T San Diego's Jeff McDonald is more willing to expose SDCOE than Voice of San Diego is. As a member of Voice of San Diego, I never thought I'd be forced to confess that we need the U-T in order to get balanced news reporting in San Diego. I never thought Doug Manchester's rag would sometimes do a better job on education than Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs.
The U-T freely admits that it is using the paper to influence voters and officials. You know you're reading a biased paper when you read the U-T. The Union-Tribune has been killing important stories for years.
The problem with VOSD is that the bias is in the censorship--you don't know which stories they killed because donors didn't like them. Except, of course, in cases where VOSD started a story--and then killed it.
Now that Will Carless has replaced Emily Alpert at VOSD, why doesn't he conduct a "Crosier Watch" similar to the "Petty Watch" he conducted in 2008?
Over the past few years, only a few limited stories about the tactics of education attorneys have crept into the press. Reporters have to beg and plead and practically stand on their heads to get their stories published. Voice of San Diego dropped its coverage of SDCOE attorney shenanigans, and laid-off its stellar education reporter Emily Alpert. CEO Scott Lewis claimed that he didn't have enough money to pay her.
But that explanation doesn't hold water.
Voice of San Diego benefactors Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs, who claim to care about education, could have easily paid Emily's salary with their pocket change if they'd wanted her to stay. And I suspect she would have wanted to stay if her job description had been made more appealing, which would have included being allowed to publish her stories freely. At one time she must have hoped that all her work would result in some changes for children in schools.
It seems Buzz Woolley, Irwin Jacobs and Emily Alpert weren't on the same page.
I recently discovered (in a story by Jeff McDonald at the U-T) that SDCOE executive Dan Puplava, whom Emily had started investigating, was fined $7000 and had his brokers license suspended while AIG Financial, which was paying Puplava big bucks for moonlighting with them, was fined $300,000 for not properly overseeing him. Still, Puplava retains his job as head of the SDCOE Fringe Benefits Consortium.
Voice of San Diego never even placed a link in its Morning Report to the U-T San Diego story.
To its credit, VOSD's Will Carless is doing a great job investigating a school bond scam in Poway pulled off by board members and their lawyers.
But if VOSD had been willing to aggressively investigate education attorneys, the Poway Capital Appreciation Bonds scandal might have been prevented. Of course, the downside of that for VOSD would be that it wouldn't have an exciting school bond story to write about.
It seems that journalists are a bit like Plaintiff lawyers: they actually benefit from corruption and wrongdoing because investigation it gets them money and fame.
All along, of course, the school attorneys are making work for themselves by advising school boards to ignore the law.
But the public doesn't hear much about this.
In fact, even private bloggers like me and Scott Dauenhaur get sued by SDCOE lawyer Dan Shinoff for defamation on behalf of himself and his pals at SDCOE. SDCOE should stop tax dollars to stop public discussion of school attorney tactics, but it won't.
Shockingly, it seems that U-T San Diego's Jeff McDonald is more willing to expose SDCOE than Voice of San Diego is. As a member of Voice of San Diego, I never thought I'd be forced to confess that we need the U-T in order to get balanced news reporting in San Diego. I never thought Doug Manchester's rag would sometimes do a better job on education than Buzz Woolley and Irwin Jacobs.
The U-T freely admits that it is using the paper to influence voters and officials. You know you're reading a biased paper when you read the U-T. The Union-Tribune has been killing important stories for years.
The problem with VOSD is that the bias is in the censorship--you don't know which stories they killed because donors didn't like them. Except, of course, in cases where VOSD started a story--and then killed it.
Democrats are not invited to U-T San Diego's "One-Stop Shop" main event for candidates
No Democrats were invited to big event for U-T San Diego.
U-T San Diego’s one-stop-shop flop
GOP gets paper’s CEO and Hedgecock; Dems don’t
By John R. Lamb
City Beat
Sep 26, 2012
U-T San Diego editor Jeff Light told the four people who attended the second leg of the conservative paper’s “One-Stop Shop for Candidates” event two weeks ago that they were kept separate from the local GOP version “to keep the peace.”
Spin Cycle has no idea if Light was joking, but he needn’t have worried, for the Mission Valley headquarters of hotelier/developer Doug Manchester’s spreading media empire remained standing the next day.
Billed as two “exciting evenings” to showcase the U-T’s sputtering evolution into an “innovative new media company” and provide insight into “how to get noticed by the press” and “how does one get endorsed,” the differences and similarities between the Sept. 11 and Sept. 13 productions were indicative of the company’s political underpinnings.
The most notable difference was in who showed up, according to accounts of the proceedings provided to Spin Cycle. Although invitations for both events proclaimed that U-T Vice Chairman and CEO John Lynch would make “introductory remarks,” he bothered to do so only for the 50 or so conservative brothers and a handful of sisters at the Sept. 11 Republican gathering.
Of course, it was that day that the Lynch / Manchester duo had lifted its leg on the U-T’s latest conquest, the Escondido-based North County Times, whose acquisition by Manchester is set to conclude Oct. 1.
Mention of that to the GOP choir packed in the U-T’s Manchester Boardroom that night drew hoots and applause, which seemed to fire up the jock in Lynch.
“I think that allows such incredible opportunity. My kids went to school in North County, and they’ve always had an incredible heritage of fabulous prep sports and family coverage up there,” Lynch told the Republican crowd. “We can really make an impact because the North County is about who we are.”
He hinted at undetermined “plans” of “joining the papers together” and of future conquests—Manchester is rumored to be interested in snapping up the Chicago-based, bankruptcy-mired Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times—“to really create a great business with this same type of model across the country.”
If that isn’t enough to make progressives and working journalists queasy, Lynch also described his vision of changing “the political landscape in each community in terms of really supporting the values that we stand for, and that’s loving our country and loving America again,” as if somehow the Manchester / Lynch team has a lock on that market, too.
Lynch referred to local GOP honcho and “retired” video-game hacker Tony Krvaric, sitting in the audience, as a “terrific friend and partner” and lauded the fluffy profile of him that ran recently in the U-T as the kind of “good news” about “people who make a difference in our community” that Manchester—who did not attend either event—wants to provide.
Krvaric stumbled through a few laudatory sentences about “Papa Doug” (Disclosure: Spin Cycle has decided to no longer use the self-appointed paternal moniker that Manchester insists on, citing the ridiculousness of it) and bootlicked his “media powerhouse.”
“It takes a lot of guts,” the San Diego County Republican Party chairman gushed. “You are the ultimate risk takers…. There are some people that will try to take risk out of the system, which means you take opportunity out of the system. Then we’re all going to be equally miserable just like in Europe.”
Lynch said the “nationwide” coverage of the U-T’s growth plans—mostly negative—“mystifies” him. “I keep saying, ‘I’m such a nice guy!’ How could they say that?” he said to an eruption of laughter. He then turned the floor over to Mike Hodges, the man charged with turning the U-T into a multimedia dynamo of dominance. Lynch heaped praise on Hodges before going all Darth Vader on him by saying, “You better damn well hit the numbers!”
“It always comes back to the numbers, right, John?” Hodges nervously responded.
Hodges boasted about the emergence of UT-TV, the laugh-track of a television station that features, as one attendee noted, “silicon-laden blondes” who are challenged to speak in whole sentences.
Despite the newsroom and editorial staffs having been decimated by layoffs—opinion “director” Bill Osborne even noted with disdain that the once-robust 14-member editorial board has been slashed to four, with only two writers, making endorsements for the third-tier candidates who made up the majority of attendees difficult—UT-TV staffing has grown to 60, said the star of the Republican evening, loose conservative cannon Roger Hedgecock...
U-T San Diego’s one-stop-shop flop
GOP gets paper’s CEO and Hedgecock; Dems don’t
By John R. Lamb
City Beat
Sep 26, 2012
U-T San Diego editor Jeff Light told the four people who attended the second leg of the conservative paper’s “One-Stop Shop for Candidates” event two weeks ago that they were kept separate from the local GOP version “to keep the peace.”
Spin Cycle has no idea if Light was joking, but he needn’t have worried, for the Mission Valley headquarters of hotelier/developer Doug Manchester’s spreading media empire remained standing the next day.
Billed as two “exciting evenings” to showcase the U-T’s sputtering evolution into an “innovative new media company” and provide insight into “how to get noticed by the press” and “how does one get endorsed,” the differences and similarities between the Sept. 11 and Sept. 13 productions were indicative of the company’s political underpinnings.
The most notable difference was in who showed up, according to accounts of the proceedings provided to Spin Cycle. Although invitations for both events proclaimed that U-T Vice Chairman and CEO John Lynch would make “introductory remarks,” he bothered to do so only for the 50 or so conservative brothers and a handful of sisters at the Sept. 11 Republican gathering.
Of course, it was that day that the Lynch / Manchester duo had lifted its leg on the U-T’s latest conquest, the Escondido-based North County Times, whose acquisition by Manchester is set to conclude Oct. 1.
Mention of that to the GOP choir packed in the U-T’s Manchester Boardroom that night drew hoots and applause, which seemed to fire up the jock in Lynch.
“I think that allows such incredible opportunity. My kids went to school in North County, and they’ve always had an incredible heritage of fabulous prep sports and family coverage up there,” Lynch told the Republican crowd. “We can really make an impact because the North County is about who we are.”
He hinted at undetermined “plans” of “joining the papers together” and of future conquests—Manchester is rumored to be interested in snapping up the Chicago-based, bankruptcy-mired Tribune Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times—“to really create a great business with this same type of model across the country.”
If that isn’t enough to make progressives and working journalists queasy, Lynch also described his vision of changing “the political landscape in each community in terms of really supporting the values that we stand for, and that’s loving our country and loving America again,” as if somehow the Manchester / Lynch team has a lock on that market, too.
Lynch referred to local GOP honcho and “retired” video-game hacker Tony Krvaric, sitting in the audience, as a “terrific friend and partner” and lauded the fluffy profile of him that ran recently in the U-T as the kind of “good news” about “people who make a difference in our community” that Manchester—who did not attend either event—wants to provide.
Krvaric stumbled through a few laudatory sentences about “Papa Doug” (Disclosure: Spin Cycle has decided to no longer use the self-appointed paternal moniker that Manchester insists on, citing the ridiculousness of it) and bootlicked his “media powerhouse.”
“It takes a lot of guts,” the San Diego County Republican Party chairman gushed. “You are the ultimate risk takers…. There are some people that will try to take risk out of the system, which means you take opportunity out of the system. Then we’re all going to be equally miserable just like in Europe.”
Lynch said the “nationwide” coverage of the U-T’s growth plans—mostly negative—“mystifies” him. “I keep saying, ‘I’m such a nice guy!’ How could they say that?” he said to an eruption of laughter. He then turned the floor over to Mike Hodges, the man charged with turning the U-T into a multimedia dynamo of dominance. Lynch heaped praise on Hodges before going all Darth Vader on him by saying, “You better damn well hit the numbers!”
“It always comes back to the numbers, right, John?” Hodges nervously responded.
Hodges boasted about the emergence of UT-TV, the laugh-track of a television station that features, as one attendee noted, “silicon-laden blondes” who are challenged to speak in whole sentences.
Despite the newsroom and editorial staffs having been decimated by layoffs—opinion “director” Bill Osborne even noted with disdain that the once-robust 14-member editorial board has been slashed to four, with only two writers, making endorsements for the third-tier candidates who made up the majority of attendees difficult—UT-TV staffing has grown to 60, said the star of the Republican evening, loose conservative cannon Roger Hedgecock...
Saturday, September 22, 2012
The media rates readers! Voice of San Diego news quiz winners
Link: Voice of San Diego
VOSD News Quiz The results are in for last week's VOSD News Quiz and we're quite impressed. Two members received perfect scores.
First place: Lee Swanson and David Gatzke win $500 vouchers for Co-Merge Workplace
Second place: Jo Brooks and Judy Radke win Voice of San Diego Photo Books
Third place: Bill Bradshaw, Pat Seabord, Dennis Doyle, David Inmon and Chris Metcalf win NEW VOSD T-shirts
VOSD News Quiz The results are in for last week's VOSD News Quiz and we're quite impressed. Two members received perfect scores.
First place: Lee Swanson and David Gatzke win $500 vouchers for Co-Merge Workplace
Second place: Jo Brooks and Judy Radke win Voice of San Diego Photo Books
Third place: Bill Bradshaw, Pat Seabord, Dennis Doyle, David Inmon and Chris Metcalf win NEW VOSD T-shirts
Friday, September 14, 2012
Did Channel 10 News "track down" the wrong people for its misleading story about John McCann's "patriotism"?
10News and Sweetwater's John McCann, True Patriots?
By Susan Luzzaro
Sept. 13, 2012
Many people believe a 10News report broadcast at 5 p.m. on September 12 deliberately misinformed the public.
On September 10, the Sweetwater Union High School District held a special meeting with an ambiguous agenda that suggested controversial interim superintendent Ed Brand would be awarded a contract. After several hours of deliberation, the board had nothing to report to the public.
Approximately 20 speakers addressed the board prior to the special closed-session meeting. When Kathleen Cheers, a community advocate, gave her speech to the board, she pointed out that the trustees had forgotten to do the pledge of allegiance. About 15 minutes later, board member John McCann requested a pledge of allegiance. The audience laughed.
“They were laughing at Mr. McCann’s opportunism,” said Cheers in a September 12 interview. 10News quoted Stewart Payne, a member of Occupy Sweetwater, explaining the laughter as well: "The moans and groans you hear aren't about the Pledge of Allegiance. They're about John McCann making it about himself again.”
Nevertheless, 10News told the story differently. “Disrespectful laughter at the flag and victims of 9/11,” said news anchor Kim Hunt, leading into the story. “10News has obtained an audio recording of a recent local school board meeting where the crowd appears to laugh at a request to say the pledge and a moment of silence for 9/11…. Joe Little tracked down the people in the audience to get their take on the audiotape,” said Hunt, perhaps inadvertently suggesting the tape’s provenance was dubious.
The newscast included a four-second audio clip of McCann’s request being met by laughter. Before introducing the sound bite, 10News reporter Joe Little told the TV audience, “During the meeting, trustee John McCann realized the board forgot to say the pledge of allegiance.” Joe Little was not in attendance at the meeting.
Whether or not 10News had a recording of the entire meeting — including Cheers’s comment about the pledge being forgotten prior to McCann’s request for the pledge — is unknown.
Payne, a Sweetwater parent and one of the five people who took corruption charges to the district attorney’s office, sent the following message to Joe Little upon viewing the report: “I have watched the [10News] story of the board meeting held at SUHSD on Monday. While I feel the story was fairly reported, it is based on inaccurate and misleading information…”... Payne, who is one of those accused of disrespecting the flag, rarely speaks of his military career. He served 21 years in the Marines, was in three combat zones, and retired as a sergeant major. Following the 10News report, late on September 12, Sweetwater board member Bertha Lopez phoned Little, requesting that he retract his story due to the erroneous context presented. She emailed him today to follow up. As of late afternoon September 13, Little had not responded to Lopez’s messages or two phone calls left by this reporter.
By Susan Luzzaro
Sept. 13, 2012
Many people believe a 10News report broadcast at 5 p.m. on September 12 deliberately misinformed the public.
On September 10, the Sweetwater Union High School District held a special meeting with an ambiguous agenda that suggested controversial interim superintendent Ed Brand would be awarded a contract. After several hours of deliberation, the board had nothing to report to the public.
Approximately 20 speakers addressed the board prior to the special closed-session meeting. When Kathleen Cheers, a community advocate, gave her speech to the board, she pointed out that the trustees had forgotten to do the pledge of allegiance. About 15 minutes later, board member John McCann requested a pledge of allegiance. The audience laughed.
“They were laughing at Mr. McCann’s opportunism,” said Cheers in a September 12 interview. 10News quoted Stewart Payne, a member of Occupy Sweetwater, explaining the laughter as well: "The moans and groans you hear aren't about the Pledge of Allegiance. They're about John McCann making it about himself again.”
Nevertheless, 10News told the story differently. “Disrespectful laughter at the flag and victims of 9/11,” said news anchor Kim Hunt, leading into the story. “10News has obtained an audio recording of a recent local school board meeting where the crowd appears to laugh at a request to say the pledge and a moment of silence for 9/11…. Joe Little tracked down the people in the audience to get their take on the audiotape,” said Hunt, perhaps inadvertently suggesting the tape’s provenance was dubious.
The newscast included a four-second audio clip of McCann’s request being met by laughter. Before introducing the sound bite, 10News reporter Joe Little told the TV audience, “During the meeting, trustee John McCann realized the board forgot to say the pledge of allegiance.” Joe Little was not in attendance at the meeting.
Whether or not 10News had a recording of the entire meeting — including Cheers’s comment about the pledge being forgotten prior to McCann’s request for the pledge — is unknown.
Payne, a Sweetwater parent and one of the five people who took corruption charges to the district attorney’s office, sent the following message to Joe Little upon viewing the report: “I have watched the [10News] story of the board meeting held at SUHSD on Monday. While I feel the story was fairly reported, it is based on inaccurate and misleading information…”... Payne, who is one of those accused of disrespecting the flag, rarely speaks of his military career. He served 21 years in the Marines, was in three combat zones, and retired as a sergeant major. Following the 10News report, late on September 12, Sweetwater board member Bertha Lopez phoned Little, requesting that he retract his story due to the erroneous context presented. She emailed him today to follow up. As of late afternoon September 13, Little had not responded to Lopez’s messages or two phone calls left by this reporter.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers
The UT-San Diego yesterday denied that it had bought the North County Times, but today admitted that it had. This makes Voice of San Diego all the more important to San Diegans.
U-T Buys North County Times
September 11, 2012
By DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego
Developer and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester now owns two major daily newspapers in the San Diego region: The company jointly owned by Manchester and his partner, U-T CEO John Lynch, bought the North County Times for $11.95 million. Voice of San Diego reporter Rob Davis is on the story and has been tweeting about it this morning:
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
NCT publisher confirms that, yes indeed, the sale is complete now. Today. For real...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
Yesterday's non-sale fiasco has the bad odor of a case of We Wanted to Control Our News So We Denied The Report...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers. Good time to reread my profile of him. [Click here.]
U-T San Diego to buy North County Times, Californian
MANCHESTER EXPANDS MEDIA REACH IN $11.95M DEAL
By BRADLEY J. FIKES
nctimes.com
September 11, 2012
U-T San Diego has agreed to purchase the North County Times from Lee Enterprises Inc., North County Times publisher Peter York said Tuesday. The price was $11.95 million.
The sale of the Times, including The Californian, its edition in Southwest Riverside County, had been rumored for some time. A story in the San Diego Business Journal on Monday said a sale had been completed...
U-T Buys North County Times
September 11, 2012
By DAGNY SALAS
Voice of San Diego
Developer and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester now owns two major daily newspapers in the San Diego region: The company jointly owned by Manchester and his partner, U-T CEO John Lynch, bought the North County Times for $11.95 million. Voice of San Diego reporter Rob Davis is on the story and has been tweeting about it this morning:
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
NCT publisher confirms that, yes indeed, the sale is complete now. Today. For real...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
Yesterday's non-sale fiasco has the bad odor of a case of We Wanted to Control Our News So We Denied The Report...
11 Sep 12
Rob Davis@robwdavis
The man who calls himself Papa Doug now owns all of San Diego's major papers. Good time to reread my profile of him. [Click here.]
U-T San Diego to buy North County Times, Californian
MANCHESTER EXPANDS MEDIA REACH IN $11.95M DEAL
By BRADLEY J. FIKES
nctimes.com
September 11, 2012
U-T San Diego has agreed to purchase the North County Times from Lee Enterprises Inc., North County Times publisher Peter York said Tuesday. The price was $11.95 million.
The sale of the Times, including The Californian, its edition in Southwest Riverside County, had been rumored for some time. A story in the San Diego Business Journal on Monday said a sale had been completed...
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Dismembered bodies of 2 journalists found in Mexico
Dismembered bodies of 2 journalists found in Mexico
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 4, 2012
At least two of four dismembered bodies found Thursday morning in the eastern state of Veracruz and bearing signs of torture were journalists, Mexican authorities said.
The journalists were identified as Guillermo Luna Varela and Gabriel Huge, who had been reported missing Wednesday, said Sandra Garcia, a spokeswoman for the state government...
Dangers faced by journalists in Mexico
..."By the characteristics of the crime, one presumes that organized crime was involved in the commission of these homicides," the attorney general's office said in a statement.
Luna Varela worked as a photographer for veracruznews.com.mx, and Huge "dedicated himself to private activities," it said.
Their relatives said they had been missing since Wednesday, the statement said.
The bodies were found by naval police in the Zamorana Canal in the city of Boca del Rio, where two abandoned trucks were found last November containing 35 bodies.
The discovery of the photographers' bodies occurred on World Press Freedom Day and four days after Regina Martinez, a reporter for the weekly Proceso magazine, was found strangled in her house in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Since 2000, a total of 76 journalists have been killed in Mexico -- not counting Martinez or the two photographers -- according to data from the National Human Rights Commission.
By the CNN Wire Staff
May 4, 2012
At least two of four dismembered bodies found Thursday morning in the eastern state of Veracruz and bearing signs of torture were journalists, Mexican authorities said.
The journalists were identified as Guillermo Luna Varela and Gabriel Huge, who had been reported missing Wednesday, said Sandra Garcia, a spokeswoman for the state government...
Dangers faced by journalists in Mexico
..."By the characteristics of the crime, one presumes that organized crime was involved in the commission of these homicides," the attorney general's office said in a statement.
Luna Varela worked as a photographer for veracruznews.com.mx, and Huge "dedicated himself to private activities," it said.
Their relatives said they had been missing since Wednesday, the statement said.
The bodies were found by naval police in the Zamorana Canal in the city of Boca del Rio, where two abandoned trucks were found last November containing 35 bodies.
The discovery of the photographers' bodies occurred on World Press Freedom Day and four days after Regina Martinez, a reporter for the weekly Proceso magazine, was found strangled in her house in Xalapa, Veracruz.
Since 2000, a total of 76 journalists have been killed in Mexico -- not counting Martinez or the two photographers -- according to data from the National Human Rights Commission.
Monday, March 05, 2012
Rush Limbaugh is probably not sweating this one, folks.: Still has the biggest sponsor on his side
Rush Limbaugh: Still has the biggest sponsor on his side
By Rene Lynch
Los Angeles Times
March 5, 2012
Rush Limbaugh is probably not sweating this one, folks. The critics keep piling on. But the immensely popular talk radio host has the biggest "sponsor" of all on his side: Clear Channel radio network.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan are among the latest to criticize Limbaugh for calling a Georgetown University student a "slut" and a "prostitute" after she testified in favor of birth control insurance coverage.
But Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh's conservative talk show, has voiced its unwavering support for Limbaugh, whose contract runs through 2016.
"The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue," Premiere Networks told the Associated Press. "We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions."
A representative for Premiere declined to tell the news service how much revenue the company is losing over the recent loss of advertisers seeking to distance themselves from Limbaugh and his comments.
So far, at least seven advertisers have at least temporarily pulled away from the show, including ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, mattress retailers Sleep Train and Sleep Number, software maker Citrix Systems Inc., online data backup service provider Carbonite and online legal document services company LegalZoom, according to the Associated Press.
The advertisers who discussed the decision publicly said that Limbaugh crossed a line, going "beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company,” said ProFlowers, an online floral delivery service.
Limbaugh caused a national uproar when he called Sandra Fluke, 30, a "slut" and "prostitute" and said she should post her sex videos online so he could watch. Limbaugh had blasted Fluke after she testified before Democratic congressional representatives in support of national healthcare policies that would force all employers -- including her Catholic-affiliated university, to cover birth control for women.
The furor led President Obama to personally telephone Fluke to lend his support. And Republicans and Democrats alike lambasted Limbaugh, who apologized to Fluke on Saturday.
But that was too little too late for some, like David Friend, a father of two adult daughters. Friend is also the chief executive of Carbonite, which provides online backup services, and was a frequent advertiser on Limbaugh's show. Friend issued a statement saying that he took the comments personally and could no longer be associated with the show.
"No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse."
For her part, Fluke said today on "The View" that Limbaugh's apology was insufficient.
McCain said Limbaugh's comments were "totally unacceptable" and "should be condemned" during an appearance on the CBSprogram "This Morning." New York's Dolan, who has been leading the battle to roll back blanket birth control coverage, on Sunday told the Daily News that the debate on such matters needs to stay civil. Gringrich also said Limbaugh was right to apologize for his statements -- and also said that the bigger issue were efforts by the "elite media" to frame the issue.
By Rene Lynch
Los Angeles Times
March 5, 2012
Rush Limbaugh is probably not sweating this one, folks. The critics keep piling on. But the immensely popular talk radio host has the biggest "sponsor" of all on his side: Clear Channel radio network.
Arizona Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, and New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan are among the latest to criticize Limbaugh for calling a Georgetown University student a "slut" and a "prostitute" after she testified in favor of birth control insurance coverage.
But Clear Channel's Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh's conservative talk show, has voiced its unwavering support for Limbaugh, whose contract runs through 2016.
"The contraception debate is one that sparks strong emotion and opinions on both sides of the issue," Premiere Networks told the Associated Press. "We respect the right of Mr. Limbaugh, as well as the rights of those who disagree with him, to express those opinions."
A representative for Premiere declined to tell the news service how much revenue the company is losing over the recent loss of advertisers seeking to distance themselves from Limbaugh and his comments.
So far, at least seven advertisers have at least temporarily pulled away from the show, including ProFlowers, Quicken Loans, mattress retailers Sleep Train and Sleep Number, software maker Citrix Systems Inc., online data backup service provider Carbonite and online legal document services company LegalZoom, according to the Associated Press.
The advertisers who discussed the decision publicly said that Limbaugh crossed a line, going "beyond political discourse to a personal attack and do not reflect our values as a company,” said ProFlowers, an online floral delivery service.
Limbaugh caused a national uproar when he called Sandra Fluke, 30, a "slut" and "prostitute" and said she should post her sex videos online so he could watch. Limbaugh had blasted Fluke after she testified before Democratic congressional representatives in support of national healthcare policies that would force all employers -- including her Catholic-affiliated university, to cover birth control for women.
The furor led President Obama to personally telephone Fluke to lend his support. And Republicans and Democrats alike lambasted Limbaugh, who apologized to Fluke on Saturday.
But that was too little too late for some, like David Friend, a father of two adult daughters. Friend is also the chief executive of Carbonite, which provides online backup services, and was a frequent advertiser on Limbaugh's show. Friend issued a statement saying that he took the comments personally and could no longer be associated with the show.
"No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse."
For her part, Fluke said today on "The View" that Limbaugh's apology was insufficient.
McCain said Limbaugh's comments were "totally unacceptable" and "should be condemned" during an appearance on the CBSprogram "This Morning." New York's Dolan, who has been leading the battle to roll back blanket birth control coverage, on Sunday told the Daily News that the debate on such matters needs to stay civil. Gringrich also said Limbaugh was right to apologize for his statements -- and also said that the bigger issue were efforts by the "elite media" to frame the issue.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
U.S. drops in Press Freedom index
PRESS FREEDOM INDEX 2011/2012
Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings
“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
“It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.
“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011.”...
Syria, Bahrain and Yemen get worst ever rankings
“This year’s index sees many changes in the rankings, changes that reflect a year that was incredibly rich in developments, especially in the Arab world,” Reporters Without Borders said today as it released its 10th annual press freedom index. “Many media paid dearly for their coverage of democratic aspirations or opposition movements. Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes. The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news.
“Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011. Never has freedom of information been so closely associated with democracy. Never have journalists, through their reporting, vexed the enemies of freedom so much. Never have acts of censorship and physical attacks on journalists seemed so numerous. The equation is simple: the absence or suppression of civil liberties leads necessarily to the suppression of media freedom. Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.
“It is no surprise that the same trio of countries, Eritrea, Turkmenistan and North Korea, absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties, again occupy the last three places in the index. This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror, and by Bahrain and Vietnam, quintessential oppressive regimes. Other countries such as Uganda and Belarus have also become much more repressive.
“This year’s index finds the same group of countries at its head, countries such as Finland, Norway and Netherlands that respect basic freedoms. This serves as a reminder that media independence can only be maintained in strong democracies and that democracy needs media freedom. It is worth noting the entry of Cape Verde and Namibia into the top twenty, two African countries where no attempts to obstruct the media were reported in 2011.”...
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Journalists—Myself Included—Swept Up in Mass Arrest at Occupy Oakland
Journalists—Myself Included—Swept Up in Mass Arrest at Occupy Oakland
By Gavin Aronsen
Mother Jones
Jan. 29, 2012
Occupy Oakland protesters flee as police attempt to kettle them ahead of Saturday's mass arrest. Glenn Halog/Flickr
On Saturday, Occupy Oakland re-entered the national spotlight during a day-long effort to take over an empty building and transform it into a social center. Oakland police thwarted the efforts, arresting more than 400 people in the process, primarily during a mass nighttime arrest outside a downtown YMCA. That number included at least six journalists, myself included, in direct violation of OPD media relations policy that states "media shall never be targeted for dispersal or enforcement action because of their status."
After an unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center, the more than 1,000 protesters elected to return to the site of their former encampment outside city hall. On the way, they clashed with officers, advancing down a street with makeshift shields of corrogated metal and throwing objects at a police line. Officers responded with smoke grenades, tear gas, and bean bag projectiles. After protesters regrouped, they marched through downtown as police pursued and eventually contained a few hundred of them in an enclosed space outside a YMCA. Some entered the gym and were arrested inside.
As soon as it became clear that I would be kettled with the protesters, I displayed my press credentials to a line of officers and asked where to stand to avoid arrest. In past protests, the technique always proved successful. But this time, no officer said a word. One pointed back in the direction of the protesters, refusing to let me leave. Another issued a notice that everyone in the area was under arrest.
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I wound up in a back corner of the space between the YMCA and a neighboring building, where I met Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle and Kristin Hanes of KGO Radio. After it became clear that we would probably have to wait for hours there as police arrested hundreds of people packed tightly in front of us, we maneuvered our way to the front of the kettle to display our press credentials once more.
When Hanes displayed hers, an officer shook his head. "That's not an Oakland pass," he told her. "You're getting arrested." (She had a press pass issued by San Francisco, but not Oakland, police.) Another officer rejected my credentials, and I began interviewing soon-to-be-arrested protesters standing nearby. About five minutes later, an officer grabbed my arm and ziptied me. Around the same time, Ho—who did have official OPD credentials—was also apprehended.
As I waited in line to be processed and transported to jail, Ho approached me with an officer who had released her from custody. The two explained to my arresting officer that I was with the media. "Oh, he's with the media?" the officer replied, although I had already repeatedly told him as much and my credentials had been plainly visible all night. He appeared ready to release me, until a nearby officer piped in, without explanation: "He's getting arrested."
Later, before I was loaded on a police bus with 48 protesters, another officer told a protester in front of me that he should have left after police issued dispersal orders. When I told the officer that I had attempted to do just that, he asked, "How long have you been out here today?" "Since about 1:30." Flashing a smile and telling me that he didn't care I was a reporter, he replied, "We've been issuing dispersal orders all day." Kettled protesters claimed that no orders were issued until they had no means of escape, but in either case the orders were difficult to hear over the commotion of the crowd.
As police rounded up protesters into vans outside the YMCA, several occupiers who managed to avoid capture retaliated by vandalizing city hall. Others protested outside an Oakland jail where the officer driving the bus I was escorted onto had promised to take us "if you don't piss me off." Instead, he had to drive to a county jail in Santa Rita about 40 minutes away. (Officers from at least seven outside agencies came to Oakland in response to the day's events.)
After spending about an hour locked up alone in a drunk-tank cellblock, OPD Sergeant Jeff Thomason arrived to release me, thanks to a call from Mother Jones co-editor-in-chief Monika Bauerlein. "You probably shouldn't have been in here to begin with," he told me apologetically as he escorted me in his personal car back to the scene of my arrest to retrieve my backpack where I'd stashed my steno pad. But for the time-being, it was unretrievable under a massive pile of occupiers' bags in the back of a police van.
At least five other reporters were arrested last night: Hanes, Ho, John C. Osborn of the East Bay Express, Yael Chanoff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and graphic journalist Susie Cagle, who was previously arrested during the short-lived occupation of a vacant downtown building following Occupy Oakland's first port shutdown last November. Chanoff was taken to the Santa Rita jail. The others were all quickly released at the scene (an officer told Cagle that he was doing her a "favor").
Oakland police, who have been instructed ahead of past Occupy Oakland protests not to prevent anyone "claiming media affiliation" from "engag[ing] in activity afforded to media personnel," particularly "during times of civil unrest," have also violated department policy on crowd control responding to previous Occupy protests. The ongoing game of cat-and-mouse between police and protesters has frustrated officers forced to work overtime hours at a department that will likely be placed in federal receivership for civil rights violations that predate the Occupy movement. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the OPD remains "woefully behind its peers around the state and nation."
"The Bay Area Occupy movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said in a statement during last night's arrests that made no mention of her police department's lack of regard for journalists' First Amendment protections. Last week, the United States dropped 27 spots in Reporters Without Borders' annual press freedom index due to police treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement. By Josh Stearns's count, more than three dozen reporters have been arrested since the movement began last year in Manhattan.
Editorial Fellow
Gavin Aronsen is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones.
By Gavin Aronsen
Mother Jones
Jan. 29, 2012
Occupy Oakland protesters flee as police attempt to kettle them ahead of Saturday's mass arrest. Glenn Halog/Flickr
On Saturday, Occupy Oakland re-entered the national spotlight during a day-long effort to take over an empty building and transform it into a social center. Oakland police thwarted the efforts, arresting more than 400 people in the process, primarily during a mass nighttime arrest outside a downtown YMCA. That number included at least six journalists, myself included, in direct violation of OPD media relations policy that states "media shall never be targeted for dispersal or enforcement action because of their status."
After an unsuccessful afternoon effort to occupy a former convention center, the more than 1,000 protesters elected to return to the site of their former encampment outside city hall. On the way, they clashed with officers, advancing down a street with makeshift shields of corrogated metal and throwing objects at a police line. Officers responded with smoke grenades, tear gas, and bean bag projectiles. After protesters regrouped, they marched through downtown as police pursued and eventually contained a few hundred of them in an enclosed space outside a YMCA. Some entered the gym and were arrested inside.
As soon as it became clear that I would be kettled with the protesters, I displayed my press credentials to a line of officers and asked where to stand to avoid arrest. In past protests, the technique always proved successful. But this time, no officer said a word. One pointed back in the direction of the protesters, refusing to let me leave. Another issued a notice that everyone in the area was under arrest.
Advertise on MotherJones.com
I wound up in a back corner of the space between the YMCA and a neighboring building, where I met Vivian Ho of the San Francisco Chronicle and Kristin Hanes of KGO Radio. After it became clear that we would probably have to wait for hours there as police arrested hundreds of people packed tightly in front of us, we maneuvered our way to the front of the kettle to display our press credentials once more.
When Hanes displayed hers, an officer shook his head. "That's not an Oakland pass," he told her. "You're getting arrested." (She had a press pass issued by San Francisco, but not Oakland, police.) Another officer rejected my credentials, and I began interviewing soon-to-be-arrested protesters standing nearby. About five minutes later, an officer grabbed my arm and ziptied me. Around the same time, Ho—who did have official OPD credentials—was also apprehended.
As I waited in line to be processed and transported to jail, Ho approached me with an officer who had released her from custody. The two explained to my arresting officer that I was with the media. "Oh, he's with the media?" the officer replied, although I had already repeatedly told him as much and my credentials had been plainly visible all night. He appeared ready to release me, until a nearby officer piped in, without explanation: "He's getting arrested."
Later, before I was loaded on a police bus with 48 protesters, another officer told a protester in front of me that he should have left after police issued dispersal orders. When I told the officer that I had attempted to do just that, he asked, "How long have you been out here today?" "Since about 1:30." Flashing a smile and telling me that he didn't care I was a reporter, he replied, "We've been issuing dispersal orders all day." Kettled protesters claimed that no orders were issued until they had no means of escape, but in either case the orders were difficult to hear over the commotion of the crowd.
As police rounded up protesters into vans outside the YMCA, several occupiers who managed to avoid capture retaliated by vandalizing city hall. Others protested outside an Oakland jail where the officer driving the bus I was escorted onto had promised to take us "if you don't piss me off." Instead, he had to drive to a county jail in Santa Rita about 40 minutes away. (Officers from at least seven outside agencies came to Oakland in response to the day's events.)
After spending about an hour locked up alone in a drunk-tank cellblock, OPD Sergeant Jeff Thomason arrived to release me, thanks to a call from Mother Jones co-editor-in-chief Monika Bauerlein. "You probably shouldn't have been in here to begin with," he told me apologetically as he escorted me in his personal car back to the scene of my arrest to retrieve my backpack where I'd stashed my steno pad. But for the time-being, it was unretrievable under a massive pile of occupiers' bags in the back of a police van.
At least five other reporters were arrested last night: Hanes, Ho, John C. Osborn of the East Bay Express, Yael Chanoff of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and graphic journalist Susie Cagle, who was previously arrested during the short-lived occupation of a vacant downtown building following Occupy Oakland's first port shutdown last November. Chanoff was taken to the Santa Rita jail. The others were all quickly released at the scene (an officer told Cagle that he was doing her a "favor").
Oakland police, who have been instructed ahead of past Occupy Oakland protests not to prevent anyone "claiming media affiliation" from "engag[ing] in activity afforded to media personnel," particularly "during times of civil unrest," have also violated department policy on crowd control responding to previous Occupy protests. The ongoing game of cat-and-mouse between police and protesters has frustrated officers forced to work overtime hours at a department that will likely be placed in federal receivership for civil rights violations that predate the Occupy movement. Last week, a federal judge ruled that the OPD remains "woefully behind its peers around the state and nation."
"The Bay Area Occupy movement has got to stop using Oakland as their playground," Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said in a statement during last night's arrests that made no mention of her police department's lack of regard for journalists' First Amendment protections. Last week, the United States dropped 27 spots in Reporters Without Borders' annual press freedom index due to police treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement. By Josh Stearns's count, more than three dozen reporters have been arrested since the movement began last year in Manhattan.
Editorial Fellow
Gavin Aronsen is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Doug Manchester, the new San Diego Union-Tribune owner, thinks of himself as Richard III
November 18, 2011
Paper Will Call Out Stadium Opponents as 'Obstructionists'
Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
Local hotel magnate Doug Manchester is buying The San Diego Union-Tribune, and heads are going to spin, if not roll: the paper's incoming president and CEO promises big changes.
John Lynch, a former local radio exec who's set to be that top boss, "said he wants the paper to be pro-business. The sports page to be pro-Chargers stadium. And reporters to become stars," our Rob Davis reports. In fact, Lynch said he wants the sports page to "call out those who don't (support a new stadium) as obstructionists."
Wow. However, Lynch said he expects that Manchester will "respect journalistic integrity" and adds that "we'd like to be a cheerleader for all that's good about San Diego."
Manchester says he paid above $110 million for the newspaper. That suggests the Platinum Equity firm, which bought the paper in 2009, made a tidy profit by flipping it.
Both Manchester and Lynch are known for their conservative bona-fides; in 2006, Lynch referred to then-Councilman Donna Frye, an iconoclast politician and hero not only to liberals, as "to the left of Mao."
So who's Manchester? Local reporter Tony Perry of the L.A. Times calls him "a minor league Donald Trump."
He's a polarizing figure, known for the moniker he insists on people using ("Papa Doug"), his stand against gay marriage (although he says he's not anti-gay and supports domestic partnerships), his luxurious hotels (a five-star rating for one of them made a big splash in the U-T this week), his push toward development (a state agency just rejected his mammoth $1.3 billion project planned on Navy property downtown) and his divorce after 43 years of marriage (it was messy).
* Check our reader's guide for a look back at the U-T's road from the glory days of the mid-2000s to post-boom heartache and dashed dreams under Copley ownership.
* News of the sale immediately sparked anger and threats of subscription cancellations. ("Manchester and his politics scare the **** out of me," wrote commenter Bill Paul, while Chris Brewster bemoaned "this unfortunate devolution in San Diego journalism.")
Fred Smith complained that the Copleys were "were extreme libs" (a comment that will send eyebrows rocketing skyward all over town) and says he "refused to read the rag when the Copleys ran it into the ground," while Darrell Thomas referred to "extreme left rags" like... the L.A. Times. (The sound you hear is even more wayward eyebrows.)
And then there's commenter David Hall. He weighed in with a zinger: "I don't think the UT has been consistently left or right. It has, however, been consistently bad."
In the U-T's defense, bashing the local rag has been a national pasttime since the first time headlines met hot type.
For more opinions, check our compilation of Twitter comments.
* And what of U-T employees? They're already sucking up to ... er, greeting their new owner. "We believe this is a step in the right direction for The San Diego Union-Tribune," the U-T's "Team" declared on Facebook. "As Dean Nelson pointed out, Doug Manchester is a brilliant guy. We're excited to have local owners who are in-touch with what's going on in our city and we look forward to the amazing things the future holds for our newspaper."
The U-T's story about the sale included not a discouraging word (or even a slightly non-positive one) about the paper or the owners, but had plenty of things-are-just-peachy verbiage.
We have two principal stories: one immediate analysis looking at the sale and getting reaction, and a second turning to the biggest question: in what direction do Manchester and Lynch take the news and editorial pages.
Tidbits about the U-T's New Owner
* A video on Manchester's website quotes a man identified as Jim Jameson as saying: "If Shakespeare were alive today, Shakespeare wouldn't write about most of us. But he would write about Doug Manchester. In the sense of Richard III or Julius Caesar, Doug has heroic qualities that are just extraordinary. He also has the human frailties that we all have. So that the mentions of these heroic qualities and frailties together, Shakespeare would write about today."
The video is, as San Diego Magazine puts it, "super odd."
Richard III and Julius Caesar, by the way, didn't come to good ends, either in real life or in Shakespeare's plays. (Maybe Manchester should watch his back, beware the ides of March and always keep a horse on hand?)
* As you might glean from the video, Manchester is not the humblest of men. San Diego Magazine found this quote on his website: "He creates and applies the magic that creates positive experiences. His memory-makers have routinely defined and enriched San Diego's skylines and landscapes. And when he reaches beyond San Diego, which he often does, his visions dot the landscape of America. This is what Papa Doug has done and from what he draws satisfaction."
Paper Will Call Out Stadium Opponents as 'Obstructionists'
Randy Dotinga
Voice of San Diego
Local hotel magnate Doug Manchester is buying The San Diego Union-Tribune, and heads are going to spin, if not roll: the paper's incoming president and CEO promises big changes.
John Lynch, a former local radio exec who's set to be that top boss, "said he wants the paper to be pro-business. The sports page to be pro-Chargers stadium. And reporters to become stars," our Rob Davis reports. In fact, Lynch said he wants the sports page to "call out those who don't (support a new stadium) as obstructionists."
Wow. However, Lynch said he expects that Manchester will "respect journalistic integrity" and adds that "we'd like to be a cheerleader for all that's good about San Diego."
Manchester says he paid above $110 million for the newspaper. That suggests the Platinum Equity firm, which bought the paper in 2009, made a tidy profit by flipping it.
Both Manchester and Lynch are known for their conservative bona-fides; in 2006, Lynch referred to then-Councilman Donna Frye, an iconoclast politician and hero not only to liberals, as "to the left of Mao."
So who's Manchester? Local reporter Tony Perry of the L.A. Times calls him "a minor league Donald Trump."
He's a polarizing figure, known for the moniker he insists on people using ("Papa Doug"), his stand against gay marriage (although he says he's not anti-gay and supports domestic partnerships), his luxurious hotels (a five-star rating for one of them made a big splash in the U-T this week), his push toward development (a state agency just rejected his mammoth $1.3 billion project planned on Navy property downtown) and his divorce after 43 years of marriage (it was messy).
* Check our reader's guide for a look back at the U-T's road from the glory days of the mid-2000s to post-boom heartache and dashed dreams under Copley ownership.
* News of the sale immediately sparked anger and threats of subscription cancellations. ("Manchester and his politics scare the **** out of me," wrote commenter Bill Paul, while Chris Brewster bemoaned "this unfortunate devolution in San Diego journalism.")
Fred Smith complained that the Copleys were "were extreme libs" (a comment that will send eyebrows rocketing skyward all over town) and says he "refused to read the rag when the Copleys ran it into the ground," while Darrell Thomas referred to "extreme left rags" like... the L.A. Times. (The sound you hear is even more wayward eyebrows.)
And then there's commenter David Hall. He weighed in with a zinger: "I don't think the UT has been consistently left or right. It has, however, been consistently bad."
In the U-T's defense, bashing the local rag has been a national pasttime since the first time headlines met hot type.
For more opinions, check our compilation of Twitter comments.
* And what of U-T employees? They're already sucking up to ... er, greeting their new owner. "We believe this is a step in the right direction for The San Diego Union-Tribune," the U-T's "Team" declared on Facebook. "As Dean Nelson pointed out, Doug Manchester is a brilliant guy. We're excited to have local owners who are in-touch with what's going on in our city and we look forward to the amazing things the future holds for our newspaper."
The U-T's story about the sale included not a discouraging word (or even a slightly non-positive one) about the paper or the owners, but had plenty of things-are-just-peachy verbiage.
We have two principal stories: one immediate analysis looking at the sale and getting reaction, and a second turning to the biggest question: in what direction do Manchester and Lynch take the news and editorial pages.
Tidbits about the U-T's New Owner
* A video on Manchester's website quotes a man identified as Jim Jameson as saying: "If Shakespeare were alive today, Shakespeare wouldn't write about most of us. But he would write about Doug Manchester. In the sense of Richard III or Julius Caesar, Doug has heroic qualities that are just extraordinary. He also has the human frailties that we all have. So that the mentions of these heroic qualities and frailties together, Shakespeare would write about today."
The video is, as San Diego Magazine puts it, "super odd."
Richard III and Julius Caesar, by the way, didn't come to good ends, either in real life or in Shakespeare's plays. (Maybe Manchester should watch his back, beware the ides of March and always keep a horse on hand?)
* As you might glean from the video, Manchester is not the humblest of men. San Diego Magazine found this quote on his website: "He creates and applies the magic that creates positive experiences. His memory-makers have routinely defined and enriched San Diego's skylines and landscapes. And when he reaches beyond San Diego, which he often does, his visions dot the landscape of America. This is what Papa Doug has done and from what he draws satisfaction."
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