Month: March 2010

At GateHouse, as elsewhere, the rich get richer

Kirk Davis

Seems like it’s been ages since I last wrote about GateHouse Media, the financially challenged Fairport, N.Y.-based company that owns about 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts.

Things may be more quiet than they were a year ago, but rumblings of dissension persist. Several anonymous employees sent this along, detailing some mighty nice bonuses top GateHouse officials paid themselves to publish understaffed newspapers run by overworked, low-paid journalists.

Leading the parade is chief executive Michael Reed, who got $500,000. Taking the silver, with $250,000, was president and chief operating officer Kirk Davis, a top GateHouse official in Massachusetts before decamping for upstate New York last year.

It’s an old story. Ordinary people work hard for short money while the folks at the top reward themselves. Reed and Davis are managing a difficult situation, and it may well be that they deserve to be compensated handsomely just for keeping GateHouse alive. Then, too, their situation is hardly unique.

Just a few days ago we learned that Joseph Lodovic IV, president of Dean Singleton’s MediaNews chain, was receiving a $500,000 bonus for the bang-up job he did putting together a structured-bankruptcy plan. That may be the way of the world. But such tidbits can be pretty hard to swallow for those who actually cover late-night meetings and give up their weekends to photograph local events.

In other GateHouse news, here is a weird story involving a reporter for the company’s Dodge City Daily Globe, in Kansas, who was fired in the midst of a legal dispute over whether she should testify about her confidential source in a murder case.

I’m going to have to side with management on this one. The reason: Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, tells the Topeka Capital-Journal that the reporter, Claire O’Brien, refused to show up in court to answer the subpoena she’d received.

“What she did was really stick a thumb in the judge’s eye today,” Dalglish is quoted as saying. “Even if you’re not going to answer questions, you still have to go to court.”

Media Nation Rule No. 57: If Lucy Dalglish doesn’t stand up for you on a freedom-of-the-press issue, then you’re wrong.

Tuesday evening update: Dalglish takes a rather different stance on the RCFP Web site, saying she finds O’Brien’s termination “unusual” and “quite disturbing.” An Associated Press account of what happened is worth reading, too.

Connecting the public-pension dots

Chris Cassidy reports in the Salem News that the state has appointed a replacement for Essex Regional Retirement Board chairman Timothy Bassett, whose reign of error may finally be drawing to a close — although Bassett, naturally, is fighting it in court. (Here’s just a small taste from the archives.)

Andrea Estes reports in the Boston Globe that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is passing out enabling taxpayer-funded pensions as if they were bags of popcorn, in one case awarding greasing the skids for a nearly $47,000 annual pension for someone who’d worked full-time for only three years.

And Mary Williams Walsh reports in the New York Times that states across the country are taking enormous risks with their public-pension funds, gambling that junk bonds and other dubious investments will help them catch up with their ballooning liabilities.

The question that doesn’t get asked often enough: Why are public employees still receiving pension benefits when virtually everyone hired in the private sector for the past 10 or 15 years has been diverted to a defined-contribution plan such as a 401(k)?

David Axelrod and the wages of workaholism

Old friend Mark Leibovich has a profile of President Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, in today’s New York Times. The premise is that many Democrats are wondering if Axelrod is too much the star-struck Obama groupie to be effective. But what really caught my eye was this:

Mr. Axelrod’s friends worry about the toll of his job — citing his diet (cold-cut-enriched), his weight (20 pounds heavier than at the start of the presidential campaign), sleep deprivation (five fitful hours a night), separation from family (most back home in Chicago) and the fact that at 55, he is considerably older than many of the wunderkind workaholics of the West Wing. He wakes at 6 in his rented condominium just blocks from the White House and typically returns around 11.

Leibovich also finds Axelrod “tearing into a five-inch corned beef sandwich on rye with a Flintstone-size turkey drumstick waiting on deck.”

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Axelrod really has lost his mojo. Don’t you think he might be doing a better job if he were working, say, eight to 10 hours a day, eating properly, sleeping eight hours a night and getting some exercise?

As it stands, his routine would bring most of us to the brink of a nervous breakdown. That can’t be good for the president or the causes he champions.

Controlling the casino-gambling narrative

House Speaker Robert DeLeo and Senate president Therese Murray

CommonWealth Magazine’s Michael Jonas says that Massachusetts House Speaker Robert DeLeo, by focusing on the jobs that casino gambling would bring, is trying to control the narrative in a way that is not in accord with reality. (Boston Globe story on DeLeo’s proposal for two casinos and four racinos.) Jonas writes:

The battle over casinos is always a battle to control the narrative. If the narrative stays focused on jobs and putting people who are hurting and in real economic distress back to work, proponents win. If it’s about predatory gambling and the state partnering up with rich casino moguls to pick the pockets of the lower-income residents who will disproportionately be the ones dumping their paychecks into the slots DeLeo wants installed at the state’s four racetracks (two of which are in his Winthrop-based district), the prospects could get, well, dicey.

Jonas observes that compulsive-gambling rates double in areas where casinos are located — and that problem gambling isn’t just an unfortunate byproduct of casino (and racino) gambling, but part of the business model.

The great Gladys Kravitz surveys the landscape as well, and pronounces DeLeo’s speech yesterday to be a “trifecta”: (1) experts are already saying the racinos DeLeo envisons will have to grow into casinos in order to survive; (2) New Hampshire and Rhode Island officials responded by reviving their own casino plans; and (3) the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s fading hopes of building a casino in Middleborough got a jolt of life.

It’s an absolutely miserable situation. DeLeo, Gov. Deval Patrick and Senate president Therese Murray are all on record as supporting casinos. Patrick’s most plausible opponents in the governor’s race, Republican Charlie Baker and independent Tim Cahill, are pro-gambling as well.

United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts is where you can find out everything worth knowing about casinos and slot machines.

Photo (cc) allegedly by Martha Coakley, although I doubt she took it, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Radar can’t be wrong

Radar Online has posted an anonymously sourced item claiming that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is “considering” stepping down. Well, consider this: There’s no way Radar can be wrong, is there? The item goes on to say that Roberts “could announce his decision at any time.” If Roberts retires in 2021, will Radar, if it’s still around, demand a Pulitzer?

That was quick: If you follow the link now (1:41 p.m.), you’ll see that Radar has retracted the item.

A few thoughts on China’s dwarfism theme park

Billy Barty and Midgets of America gather in Reno, Nev., in 1957.

There’s a fascinating story in today’s New York Times about a theme park in China that stars people with dwarfism. Sharon LaFraniere writes that the park, the Kingdom of the Little People, is controversial because it depicts dwarfs in demeaning roles. And there’s no doubt it’s jarring to modern Western sensibilities. But I’m not sure it’s really that simple.

For one thing, it’s clear from the story that, for people with disabilities living in China, the Kingdom of the Little People is a pretty good gig. Here’s a relevant excerpt:

Many performers said they enjoyed being part of a community where everyone shares the same challenges, like the height of a sink. “Before, when we were at home, we didn’t know anyone our size. When we hang out together with normal-size people, we can not really do the same things,” said Wu Zhihong, 20. “So I really felt lonely sometimes.”

For another, I think those of us involved with the dwarfism community sometimes tend to forget the reality of the not-too-distant past. Gary Arnold, spokesman for Little People of America, is quoted as saying, “I think it is horrible. What is the difference between it and a zoo?”

Arnold’s point is well-taken, to an extent. Yet LPA was founded by an actor, the late Billy Barty, and the group originally came together in the late 1950s under a banner that read “Midgets of America” — something that would provoke protests today.

Moreover, a number of people with dwarfism, including intelligent, successful people who are LPA members in good standing, have exploited their unique features to get work in the entertainment business. And movies like “The Station Agent” remain the exception.

In the last few years we’ve seen the mainstreaming of dwarfism, due in large measure to television series such as “Little People, Big World” and “The Little Couple.” As I’ve written before, I think such shows are, overall, a positive. Yet we’re kidding ourselves if we think they’re not on some level exploitive as well. Who would sit on the couch and watch average-size, non-dysfunctional (my Gosselin caveat!) families go about their daily lives?

Finally, you’ll note that I did slip in the word “dwarf” even though Arnold is quoted as saying that some find it offensive. Unlike the M-word, on which there is universal agreement as to its offensiveness, the notion that “dwarf” is offensive is not a mainstream view within LPA, although Arnold is right that there are those who don’t like it. But it is a word my daughter uses, and I am not offended.

You didn’t think I was going to close this out without flogging my book, did you? Here you go.

You will also note, when you look at the photos that accompany the Times story, that one of them is the same picture that was hilariously misidentified yesterday as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Making book (proposal)

Thinking about it always hurts worse than doing it. This afternoon I finished my book proposal — that is, I put a wrapper on the cover letter, the first chapter and the actual proposal, PDF’d them, stuck them in a ZIP file and sent the file off to a couple of people for their comments. Now I just need to find a publisher. And do the research and reporting. And write the book.

Sorry to be coy, but I’m not ready to tell all just yet. I can say that it’s about the new generation of community news sites, with a major emphasis on one in particular.