And now ... a message from Steve

From Pale at A Creative Revolution and featuring the smooth but fuzzy blue sweater vocalizations of our own Reverend Paperboy.

Homeland Security damage control in the Gulf

July 2 : CNN : The US Coast Guard announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms, out on the water or on beaches.
Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and class D felony charges. The coast guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet before scaling it down to 65 feet."

July 3 : MSNBC : A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security.

July 4 : Bloomberg : The US government is expected to take over control of the central information website on the Gulf oil spill response that has been run jointly by various agencies and BP for the 2 1/2 months since the rig explosion.
The Department of Homeland Security wants a one-stop shop for information that is completely overseen by the government as it settles into the long-haul of dealing with the response to the disaster. The U.S. Coast Guard falls under Homeland Security's authority.
The deepwaterhorizonresponse.com site may still be maintained during the changeover, but ultimately it will be taken down altogether when the government moves the response information to its own website."

July 6 : Washington Post : "In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.
As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

On Monday, the joint operations center for the federal government and BP reported that more than 671,428 barrels of an oil-water mixture have been captured and stored.
About 90 percent of the mixture is water, so the true amount of oil skimmed is relatively small -- roughly 67,143 barrels of oil. Had the estimated amounts in the March response plan been accurate, 38 million barrels of oil could have been removed by now. "

Although the US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power, the Republicans in the Senate have blocked it. There will be no real investigation.

The Coast Guard, under the auspices of Homeland Security, will announce this week the creation of an expert panel to conduct a "preparedness review" for Deepwater Horizon.
Minerals Management Services, the federal body charged with (not doing any) oversight, has changed its name to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

"National Toast" or "So Long and Thanks for All the Fishwrap"

It looks like curtains for the Canada's most right wing national rag. As much as I bleed ink and hate the thought of another newspaper closing down, I will not shed a tear for the National Post - I only hope the courts refuse to allow the Aspers to tie this anchor around the collective neck of their other newspapers, which like most other papers have enough financial trouble to deal with already.The National Post was started by Conrad Black to attack the governing Liberals after Prime Minister Jean Chretien refused to grant Connie a waver and let him become a British aristocrat while remaining a Canadian citizen. The soon-to-be Lord Tubby of Fleet Prisoner No. 90210 Lord Black of Cross Harbour decided that this would not do - mere law was not going this plucky underdog billionaire from achieving the British peerage that every Canadian boy dreams about. Deciding the Globe and Mail was not sufficiently conservative or at his beck and call, Tubby threw some money around, hired the cream of the conservative pundit and columnist crop, and set up the National Post.It has never made money, nor has it impressed anyone with its editorial brilliance.Despite the occasional presence of some bright lights, the National Post has been a rag from day one, the print equivalent of the FOX TV news, but without the constant stripper stories or teabag rallies.Eventually Black gave up, renounced his Canadian citizenship and bought took his seat in the House of Lords and sold the money-burning Reform-Tory organ to the Asper family, long-time Liberal party supporters who under heir-to-the-throne David Asper seem to have converted to the Likud-Republican neoconservatism embraced by movement conservatives in the United States and Canada. The acquistion of the National Post and the former Southam chain from Black, along with their purchase of several specialty TV channels, seems to have been the beginning of the end for the Asper family's CanWest media empire.Which, given the extent to which the Asper clan seems to like to interfere with editorial policy at their media properties, is just fine by me.When a news organ with pretentions to respectability starts giving editorial space to hateful, chuckleheaded boobs like Kathy Shaide and "Raphel Alexander" -- well, its time to take Old Yeller out behind the barn and do the decent thing.

Update: Well, the court has ruled that the National Post can take the rest of the former Southam chain of newspapers down with it. This is a shame because some of them, such as the Montreal Gazette, were actually doing okay compared to the rest of the industry. On the bright side, there could be some decent newspapers for sale at fire-sale-on-boxing-day prices for anyone crazy enough to want to take a chance on the newspaper business these days. Otherwise we may as well pucker up and kiss goodbye the Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Edmonton Journal, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Province, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and the Windsor Star. Which pretty much leaves the country with country with a bunch more cities that just won't have a real daily newspaper anymore.

Crossposted from the Woodshed where we have The Rules

Canwest, Natty Post, CBC ... and Goldman Sachs

Canada's largest media company, Canwest Global Communications, aka AsperMedia, filed for bankruptcy protection on Tuesday in a deal that essentially would hand control to its US creditors :

"Canwest reached a deal with a key group of lenders - mainly U.S. and foreign distressed funds that own most of the company's bonds - which will give them control of most of the restructured media company. Current shareholders would own just 2.3 per cent of the shares of the new Canwest, effectively wiping out most of their value."

The filing covers Global TV and the National Post but thus far not Canwest LP - Canwest's major daily newspapers across Canada - or its 15 money-making tv specialty channels whose profit rose 41% to $53-million in the most recent quarter over last year.

In January 2007, Goldman Sachs - this Goldman Sachs - bankrolled 64% of Leonard Asper's purchase of of 13 Alliance Atlantis specialty TV channels :

"a level far above Canadian foreign media ownership limits. However the CRTC approved the deal after the partners persuaded it that Canwest - not its giant Wall Street financial partner - would have effective operating control of the TV channels."

On the other hand, as the G&M Investor blog Streetwise reported yesterday (italics mine):

"Financiers working with Goldman said that over the past year, the investment bank put forward programming ideas for the TV networks, and offered strategic advice on restructuring, but was ignored by CanWest management and its creditors.

One concept that’s been tossed around, but couldn’t move forward until CanWest recapitalization was set, would see Goldman Sachs provide programming and financial support to the conventional television network as part of a larger deal that reworks the entire ownership structure to more closely align all the TV holdings.

There are three hedge funds driving the CanWest restructuring, and two of them are U.S. money managers: GoldenTree Asset Management, Beach Point Capital Management, along with Toronto-based West Face Capital Inc. ... These funds are also Goldman Sachs clients."

So, CRTC, you still good with this?
Goldman Sachs was not supposed to interfere with the programming of the Food Network but now expects to "provide programming and financial support" to local TV news stations?

More complications : The National Post - which never misses a chance to slag the CBC - and the CBC are now sharing content :

"The Post [will] republish CBC sports stories in the online National Post and sometimes in the newspaper. The CBC will run daily financial stories and podcasts from the Financial Post in cbc.ca’s Money section."

Translation : the publicly funded CBC will move further right as promised to run corporate news daily, while the privately owned Natty Post will now be partly funded by our tax dollars.

And those remaining 12 national and 26 community Canwest papers?
Paul Godfrey, CEO of the National Post, says he has found backers for a buyout of them.

Who will own what we think now?

Cross-posted at Creekside

Birth of a northern banana republic

Good opinion piece in the Star from Jim Travers today : The quiet unravelling of Canadian democracy.
It's not often one reads in the press about our slow slide towards becoming a northern banana republic and I can't remember the last time anyone mentioned the quiet coup perpetuated on an unwitting electorate by Canada's premier paramilitary organization - RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli ousts Martin - or the failure of our three main parties to address it.

To Jim's points I would add the following three conditions that also qualify Canada for banana republic status :

The Security and Prosperity Partnership
Rumours of its demise have been greatly exaggerated and mostly by its fans. A government assisted corporate plan to free up the movement of capitol and labour without public participation or oversight within a militarized North America, it has scarcely received mention since the last big Three Amigos bunfest. Yet on Thursday Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan appeared before the public safety committee to announce some princely sum in the millions "towards further implementation of the SPP".

Dispensing with the bother of elected representation
In addition to the first-past-the-post electoral system in which only a handful of votes in a few swing ridings actually count, there is the matter of both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition holding office by fiat. Harper dissolved parliament rather than face an election and Iggy was just simply crowned after the Liberal Party executive voted not to give the actual rank and file members of the Liberal Party the vote.

Media concentration
Canadians are more likely to know the names of Sarah Palin's grandchildren than they are to know that they probably received this news from just three Canadian media corporations.

Banana republic stuff - all of it.
Travers' column previously noted today by Jennifer, Chrystal, and Chet.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Rumours of the coalition

From Iggy’s debut speech as the Liberal leader yesterday :

"I am prepared to vote non-confidence in this government. And I am prepared to enter into a coalition government with our partners if that is what the Governor-General asks me to do. But I also made it clear to the caucus this morning that no party can have the confidence of the country if it decides to vote now against a budget it hasn't even read."

Kady live-blogging the same event :

"This is kind of interesting - we the media don’t seem to know what to make of this. It’s going to be tough to spin this into another “coalition is dead” story, but I bet we’ll manage to do it somehow. We’re professionals."

Heh. Good one, Kady. Shouldn't be too difficult really.
AsperNation, aka CanWest Global, owns most of our nation's papers and many radio and TV stations.
David Asper endorsed and campaigned for Harper during the 2006 election.
Derek Burney, chairman of CanWest, was Mulroney's chief of staff and head of Harper's transition team to power.

David Asper, chair of the National Post, from The Georgia Straight's review of Peter C. Newman's new book "Izzy: The Passionate Life and Turbulent Times of Izzy Asper, Canada’s Media Mogul" referring to their journalists:

"We own the papers. We have the right to have the papers print whatever the hell
we want them to say. And if people don’t like it, they can go to hell. They can
leave, get another job."

And what papers does AsperNation, aka CanWest Global own again? A partial list :
National Post
Calgary Herald
Edmonton Journal
The Gazette
Regina Leader-Post
Ottawa Citizen
The StarPhoenix
Times-Colonist
Windsor Star
Vancouver Sun
Vancouver Province
The Courier
The North Shore News
Canada.com

Where are you getting your news from?

Do I like Iggy? No, not much. Is he capable of outflanking Harper? Yes. Do I think he would dump the coalition in a heartbeat if he didn't need it? Yup. Is the coalition still viable? Yes. Will it be accompanied by ponies and rainbows? Nope.

This coalition idea is going to take time to appeal to a public whose understanding of our governing processes is gleaned from American TV shows and a corporate media not afraid to describe it as "treason", "junta", "separatist coalition", and "deal with the devil".
So don't be sending your rainbow ponies off into battle and then mourning their imaginary deaths.
Write a letter to your MP, sign a petition, call an openline show, talk to your neighbours.
Fight back. This is your coalition - not Iggy's and certainly not the Aspers'.
Fight for it.

Thwap's Schoolyard : What part of "majority rule" do you not get?

Expanded from Creekside

The Manning Centre for Building Democracy for Cons

Preston Manning, Stephen Harper, and Rona Ambrose pose with "the first graduates of the Manning Centre's Executive Program in Political Management at the Future Leaders Series Dinner held at the historic Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on April 18th, 2007"

... one of whom appears to be doing up his fly.

.

I didn't know about this rightwing think tank till I saw The Cylinder's post this morning with a link to Sooey for a G&M article from 2005 :

"Former Reform Party leader Preston Manning and a small group of friends have raised an initial $10-million from wealthy Albertans to launch a new non-political institution designed to promote conservative ideas in Canada...The aim of those supporting the Manning centre is to have conservative political forces win two of every three elections by changing the way Canadians view public issues, instead of losing two out of three, or three out of four, as conservative parties have done throughout Canadian history."

Ok so who'd ya get?

Preston Manning - founder of Reform and Alliance parties, Senior Fellow of the Fraser Institute

Gwyn Morgan - EnCana Corp

Rick Anderson - ASCI-Anderson Strategic Consulting Inc and chairman of Hill & Knowlton Canada

Tom Long - chair of Ont Premier Mike Harris’ campaigns, co-chair of the founding convention of the Canadian Alliance Party

Tasha Kheiriddin - CBC Newsworld producer, Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, VP of the Montreal Economic Institute, member Fraser Institute

Nigel S. Wright - Managing Director of Onex Corporation aerospace and defence group

...and much much more!

.

Patrons - Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, Bernard Lord

Fellowships - Blogging Tory Stephen Taylor, seen here being recognized by Preston Manning "for outstanding contributions to conservative online communications"

Advisors - Andrew Coyne, Tom Long, Hon. Tony Clement, Michael Walker - founder of the Fraser Institute, Michel Kelly-Gagnon - president of the Montreal Economic Institute.

.

Incestuous little bunch, aren't they?

There's a "Student Leadership Seminar" coming up...Ottawa, Nov. 21 & 22

"Calling all students: Learn the effective practices for campus activism, and how to plan for political participation.
The intention is to ensure each participant develops the social and intellectual skills to realize their respective goals, and be an asset to Canada’s democratic-conservative tradition.
You will hear from some of our country's most respected politicians, campaigners, strategists, journalists, and activists."

And they are?

Presenters : Monte Solberg, Michael Coren, Tasha Kheiriddin, and Blogging Tories Stephen Taylor and Aaron Lee Wudrick.

Alrighty then.

A page of members' contacts and their specific areas of expertise is provided for media requiring experts to interview, thus going some distance toward answering the question of why the experts interviewed by the media are so often conservative.

They also support an online journal, C2C, featuring the writing of many of those mentioned above, plus David Frum, Tom Flanagan, Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute, Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute, and a not altogether surprising number of familiar newspaper editors and columnists from across Canada.

Do stop by the photo gallery to see Ottawa mayor Larry O'Brien, Joseph Ben Ami, Dave Quist of the Institute of Marriage and Family, the guy doing up his fly, and, of course, Steve.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Get Out The Pipecleaners Part I : You Can Hear Your News Arteries Narrowing

"Why oh why," we hear the cry, "Can't we have a better media?" And then the blogger or commenter notes some piece of boneheadedness in the news, and all agree the media is lazy or dumb, or writing to the orders of big media business.

Well, maybe this is the case sometimes. But there are systemic problems which would be a problem even if the publishers were as pure as Ivory Snow. These are not going away. Speaking as a professional, now retired reporter, let me offer you a peek into the newsroom.

Between media conglomeration and frequent downsizing of newsrooms, there's no need for conspiracy theories to explain slanted or anemic news. These and other changes in the media business environment push toward less effective news coverage without even having to be aimed.

First, big media companies have been buying each other pretty steadily for the past 20 years or more. Each time they consolidate, they cut costs by layoffs. This offers an opportunity to select staff whose worldview does not clash with the views of the publisher and advertisers. I don't know how often this sort of cherrypicking takes place, but I suppose it has and still does go on.

Second, being Highly Trained Investigators and thus noticing the empty desks all around them after layoffs, reporters are given silent notice not to make waves. This probably happens even if the publisher does not intend it.

Third, the layoffs don't change the amount of copy needed to fill the pages. In fact, more copy is needed today as media has slopped over into internet and other outlets. It takes time to prepare a story, even a simple charity event or house fire. Fewer people and more work means few reporters have time to cook stuff from scratch or do demanding investigative stories. Investigative stories take a lot of time and money.

Oh, and what do experienced reporters do when they get tired of no raises and more work? They "go to the dark side" -- take a PR or publicist job with a rueful grin but without a backward glance. The pay is far better, as are the hours and the clothes. Bye-bye, experienced reporters, hello solvency.

There's little incentive for new kids to enter the field, and fewer places to get started unless you don't mind long hours and skimpy wages. So where do new seasoned reporters come from?

The reporters having vanished, the editor at deadline sees before him unfilled column inches, inviting him to take shortcuts. Real news may not get covered due to lack of staff, but filler, like oatmeal for the meatloaf, is always there waiting to be stuffed in. It's a temptation to use content supplied by others just to fill a few empty inches of space or minutes of air time.

And not just self-identified news releases either. If you look on the net, there are many sources providing free non-copyrighted news and opinion content. My old weekly paper, too pinched for income to hire enough reporters to cover the area, used a lot of this stuff, mostly business advice columns and the sort of "news" which could be printed today, next week or next year. Of course these stories aren't really free -- someone commissioned this stuff -- but if you're reading the paper you'll never know who paid the writer, or often who the writer was.

Finally, two sleeper issues affecting newspaper income are making it even harder to supply a good newspaper.

One is the growth of online classified ad services, cutting into newspaper classified income. This is a huge problem.

From an article in the Boston Globe, July 24 of this year:

"The classified economic model is broken," said Outsell Inc media analyst Ken Doctor. "It was getting strained before the recession, and now it is broken."

[...]

At EW Scripps, which owns the Rocky Mountain News and more than a dozen other newspapers as well as 10 television stations, newspaper revenue fell 13 percent on a 20 percent drop in classified ad sales, a typical if gut-wrenching decline.

Correct me if I am wrong, but if 20% of classified ad sales make up 13% of their income, does that not mean that classified ads make up 65% of their entire income? As awareness of online free classifieds grows, how can papers compete? They can't. Display ads, yes, promotions yes, but classifieds? Not a chance.

Second, there is the problem of newspaper carriers. They are paid peanuts and in most cases a car is necessary to cover the routes. How long will the papers be able to get enough adults with cars willing to get up at 4 a.m. to deliver papers at $0.17 per paper? Especially with the cost of gas rising the way it is? Yet home delivery isn't just a luxury -- it gets ads under the noses of suggestible people just waking up, people who often wouldn't even buy a paper otherwise. Home delivery makes those big ads and inserts worth the enhanced prices the display advertisers pay.

================

Dry your eyes for the poor newspapers. Hoop skirts and buggy-whips, eh? Wonderful internet will take over and fill our heads with knowledge?

No. Try to realize something -- if newsrooms are in trouble, we are in trouble. I'll talk about that in part II.

-------------------------------------------------------
Part I, Get Out The Pipecleaners Part I : You Can Hear Your News Arteries Narrowing, is here.
Part II, Get Out The Pipecleaners Part II : Robbie the Robot Can't Do News , is here.
Part III, Get Out The Pipecleaners Part III : Your Ears Aren't Big Enough, is here.