| Number 361 | February 5, 2007 |
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This Week: "Out of Iraq" Legislation Proposed
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Greetings, Almost from the beginning of Nygaard Notes I have gotten a great deal of amusement from mocking the slogan of the Star Tribune (that slogan being "Newspaper of the Twin Cities"). I explained why I do this in Notes #60, in an article called "Mystery Explained for New Readers." It had to do with it being a cynical marketing ploy as the Minneapolis paper tried to steal advertising from its St. Paul rival daily, the Pioneer Press. Imagine my surprise when I noticed recently that the Star Trib no longer uses the slogan! When did that happen?! The masthead now says, "Star Tribune, Minneapolis St. Paul. But it's still published in Minneapolis. But, since the slogan is no longer there, I will no longer mock it, and at least one reader will be very happy to hear that (Here's to you, Bonnie!). But I confess that I will miss this small running joke. I'm still laughing on the inside. My point in running the piece on the "Out of Iraq" bills this week is two-fold. The first thing is that I just think people should know that these bills have been introduced, so you can contact your elected representative and tell them to co-sponsor your favorite one, or at least vote for it. The second point is to encourage people to ponder the process by which the "nonbinding resolution" before Congress gets all the media attention—like, headlines every day—while these BINDING laws that more accurately reflect the wishes of Iraqis AND United Statesians are literally ignored. After you ponder this for a while, please contact your favorite mass media outlet and tell them that you want them to report on ALL of the legislation before Congress on what is arguably the most important issue of the day. That's all for now. See you next week! Nygaard |
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The BBC World Service commissioned a poll last month of 26,000 people in 25 different countries around the world. It was an amazing poll, despite which it was almost unreported in this country (I found it mentioned in a total of two articles, in both cases buried on the inside pages). Here are some words from the group that conducted the poll for the BBC, the Program on International Policy Attitudes: "The poll shows that world citizens disapprove of the way the U.S. government has handled all six of the foreign policy areas explored. After the Iraq war (73% disapproval), majorities across the 25 countries also disapprove of U.S. handling of Guantanamo detainees (67%), the Israeli-Hezbollah war (65%), Iran's nuclear program (60%), global warming (56%), and North Korea's nuclear program (54%)." There's much more. If you want to see for yourself, go to the PIPA website at http://www.pipa.org/
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I kind-of cheated last week when I ran the information about the "Get the U.S. Out of Iraq" bill that's been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives as a "Quote" of the Week. I mean, it was more than a "quote," and probably deserved an article of its own. So, here's the article I probably should have run last week on the "Out of Iraq" bills that have actually been introduced in the U.S. Congress. And I'll give a little information not only the three bills I mentioned last week, but also on ANOTHER bill that alert reader Alan told me about. (Thanks, Alan!) Before I go any further, I should tell people, in case you don't know, that any legislation that has been introduced into the U.S. Congress can be seen at the Library of Congress's "Thomas" website. If you don't already know about Thomas, you should. That's where you can find all the official information about any bill that's been introduced, including the full text, the bill's sponsors and co-sponsors, the status of the bill, and other stuff. You can find bills by their titles or their numbers, both of which I will give below. Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/. For those who don't want to go hunting around in Thomas, here are the four "Out of Iraq" bills that I know about, with a few words about each one. I'll go in order from the shortest to the longest bill. Bill #1. Last week I said that the "Safe and Orderly Withdrawal From Iraq Act," would "soon" be introduced. It has now been introduced, on January 31st, as bill number H.R. 746. The text of the legislation hasn't been posted yet, so I can't tell you too much about it, but a very short summary by the sponsor, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, can be found on his website: http://mcgovern.house.gov/ Bill #2. The shortest bill that has been published is H.R. 455, the "Protect the Troops and Bring Them Home Act of 2007," introduced January 12th by Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York. It has six co-sponsors, and basically just gets the troops out of Iraq by the end of 2007. Contact information for Rep. Nadler can be found on his website at http://www.house.gov/nadler/ Bill #3: The next-shortest bill (it's not that short) is HR 663, the "New Direction for Iraq Act of 2007," which not only calls for getting the troops out of Iraq within a year, but also prohibits any permanent U.S. military bases in that country. It was introduced on January 24th by Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, and has 8 co-sponsors. Here's one of the best parts of #663: "No official or representative of the Government of the United States shall seek to exercise control over the petroleum infrastructure, petroleum resources, or the economic policies of Iraq." Blumenauer's website is at http://blumenauer.house.gov/ Bill #4: The longest and most comprehensive bill is H.R. 508, the "Bring the Troops Home and Iraq Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2007," introduced on January 17th. This was introduced by California Representative Lynn Woolsey, and has 29 co-sponsors (including my own newly-elected representative, Minnesota 5th District Rep. Keith Ellison). Some of the provisions of the Woolsey bill include: * Getting all forces (including mercenary forces, known in the propaganda
system as "contractors") out of Iraq within six months; Find out more about this bill on Rep. Woolsey's website: http://woolsey.house.gov/ A majority of Iraqis want U.S. troops withdrawn from their country. A majority of United Statesians want U.S. troops withdrawn from Iraq. Yet... The preceding four bills, combined, have received a total of 1 (one) mention in the U.S. press. And that was not in the news pages, but on the editorial page of The Sunday Oregonian on January 28th. Not a single mention of any of these bills—which, I should remind you, would have the force of law, unlike the "nonbinding" resolutions that we hear about endlessly—has appeared in a daily news article anywhere in the United States of America, as far as I can determine. (Readers, please let me know if you've seen anything in your area; my database may be lacking.) To repeat the analysis of this phenomenon that I offered last week: Unbelievable. |
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A Strip, A Flip, and a Sinking Ship: The Sale of the Star Tribune (Your Newspaper May Be Next!) |
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A version of this article originally appeared in the Twin Cities Daily Planet http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/media Although this piece is about my local paper, the Star Tribune, the story is relevant around the country, as daily newspapers are going up for sale everywhere from Boston to Los Angeles, and everywhere in between.
News item, December 26th, 2006: "McClatchy Co. said Tuesday it will sell the Star Tribune newspaper to the private equity firm Avista Capital Partners for $530 million." I was in Philadelphia when a friend called to tell me that bombshell news about the "Strib." I don't think anyone expected it; even a media maniac like me was surprised by the news. Back in November, when the St. Paul Pioneer Press announced big layoffs in their newsroom, I commented on the disturbing trends in the newspaper industry that such layoffs bring into sharp relief. (Layoffs, Layoffs, Layoffs: "This Is a Newspaper Industry Thing"). The sale of the Star Trib gives more reason to be disturbed. The underlying story here is that the profitability of newspapers is declining—from obscene to merely huge—and Wall Street doesn't like it. In the case of the Star Trib, it was earning a profit of "only" 18 percent, while the other newspapers owned by the McClatchy Company earn a little more than 25 percent. For perspective, consider that corporate profits in the U.S. as a whole average about 7 percent. The 18 percent, as you can see, was "dragging down" McClatchy's profits, so they sold it to a bunch of "money people" who've never before owned a newspaper. While we don't know what will happen next, there are some things we do know that can help us make what I think is a pretty good guess. First of all, the behavior of private equity firms like Avista is considered fairly predictable in the business world. Just two months ago the influential German weekly magazine Der Spiegel summarized the pattern for which such firms have recently become famous, saying that "The emphasis is on quick money, short-term results, and the highest possible returns for their investors, regardless of what it means for their prey." By "their prey," they mean the companies they purchase, like the Star Tribune. The industry term for this pattern is "Buy it, strip it and flip it." Or, more simply: "Strip and flip." Private equity companies have been around for a long time, Der Spiegel reminds us, but "only recently ... have investors started turning to them in droves," handing over "a worldwide total of $342 billion" to such companies in 2005. These investors, says the magazine, fork over these many millions "with expectations of high returns." Which brings us back to the Star Tribune. How would a private equity firm like Avista achieve the sort of "high returns" that its investors "expect"? There are only two ways to boost profits, in any company: One way is to increase income. The other way is to reduce costs. Now, it's possible that Avista will work hard to increase the income of the Star Tribune. But recent newspaper history makes that seem rather unlikely. For example, in April of 2006, our own St. Paul Pioneer Press was sold to Denver's MediaNews Group Inc. Seven months later—on November 13th—the PiPress announced that it was laying off 5 percent of its staff. (And their circulation was increasing at the time!) Another example: At the end of May 2006, the Philadelphia Inquirer was sold to a group of local investors. Seven months later—on January 2nd, 2007—the Inquirer announced that it was laying off 16 percent of its staff. And, the most recent example: At the end of December 2006, the Star Tribune was sold to a private equity firm, and... well, I'm not in the business of predicting the future, but you see what I mean about making a good guess as to Avista's plans for its newly-acquired property. In many businesses, the largest expense is the payroll. So, if decreasing expenses is the goal, it makes all kinds of business sense to lay off workers. And therein lies the problem with the sale of a daily newspaper to a private equity firm with ever-higher profits on its mind: Journalism requires journalists, and good journalism requires lots of journalists. That is, it takes a lot of money to produce hard-hitting and socially-useful investigative journalism, far more than it takes to attend press conferences and edit wire-service copy, which is about all some newspapers (especially small ones) can afford to do these days.. In an informative article on the Star Trib sale in the January 8th issue of the Twin Cities weekly newspaper City Pages, editor Steve Perry talked about how the "market" is moving away from newspapers and toward other forms of selling advertising (which is what newspapers do, as far as Wall Street is concerned). Perry points out that the effect of all of this is to "de-capitaliz[e] the gathering of news." He asked prominent newspaper industry analyst John Morton to ponder the question, "[W]ho will assemble the resources to do even halfway substantial journalism in a post-newspaper age?" After reminding readers that "Only newspapers are economically organized to collect a large amount of news," Morton said this: "I fear that as the newsprint model declines, there will be—and there already has been—a reduction in journalistic efforts: cuts in staffing, reducing of news holes, closing of bureaus. It's all been happening for the last five years, and it all diminishes newspapers' ability to do what they're supposed to do." [Note to non-wonks: "news hole" is the term journalists use to refer to the part of the paper that is left over after space is allotted to the top priority—that is, the ads. Which sort of underlines my point above about "what newspapers do," y'see.] Last spring in these pages I summarized a report called The State of the News Media 2006, from the Project for Excellence in Journalism. At that time I took note of a comment by the authors that "heading into 2006, there was ... worry that the publicly-traded corporation may not be positioned to address the problems of journalism to the satisfaction of society." The evidence continues to mount—with recent large-scale layoffs at the Los Angeles Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News, the Dallas Morning News, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Los Angeles Times, and more—that, far from addressing "the problems of journalism," the "publicly traded corporation" may BE one of the problems. Whether the recent sale of the Star Tribune is more evidence for this case, or a startling exception to the trend, will be seen in the coming months. |
