Media Nation

In a profile today of entertainment mogul David Geffen and his interest in buying the Los Angeles Times (last item linked, below), New York Times reporters Geraldine Fabrikant and Sharon Waxman write that the New York Times Co. has said the Boston Globe is not for sale.

Knowing that the Globe recently posted a correction for a similar assertion by columnist Steve Bailey, I thought a review was in order. See if you can make any sense of this:

“Times Co. has said repeatedly that the Globe, despite its continued poor financial results, is not for sale.” — Steve Bailey, Boston Globe, Oct. 25

“Because of a reporting error, a Page One story and headline yesterday about a group of local business executives exploring a bid to purchase the Globe incorrectly stated that The New York Times Co. has repeatedly said the paper is not for sale. Times Co. executives have not commented publicly on any potential sale of the Globe.” — Correction, Boston Globe, Oct. 26

“The New York Times Company says The Globe is not for sale.” — “Today in Business,” New York Times, Oct. 26

“Times Co. officials had no comment yesterday. In a memo to Globe employees, recently appointed publisher P. Steven Ainsley said federal securities laws prohibited Times Co. officials from commenting on potential mergers and acquisitions, regardless of whether the rumors ‘are true or not.'” — Robert Gavin, Boston Globe, Oct. 26

“Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The New York Times Company, said the company did not comment on potential acquisitions or sales. ‘We view The Globe as an important asset,’ she said.” — Landon Thomas Jr., New York Times, Nov. 2

“A Times Co. spokeswoman declined to comment, referring me to previous statements, which talked about the company’s commitment to growing Globe revenues, but acknowledging it is constantly reviewing its portfolio.” — Steve Bailey, Boston Globe, Nov. 3

“The New York Times Company, which owns The Globe, has said the paper is not for sale.” — Geraldine Fabrikant and Sharon Waxman, New York Times, Nov. 9

Here’s what it looks like to me: Whenever anyone actually asks someone at the Times Co. about the Globe, the response is a non-response. But whenever the urge strikes to stick in boilerplate language, the bit about the Globe’s not being for sale creeps in.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of Deval Patrick’s big win yesterday (click here and here) is that there seems to be almost nothing to say. This one was over weeks ago. He made it look easy, from the beginning of the campaign to the end, which is a sure sign that he was actually working like a Stakhanovite. It doesn’t even seem all that remarkable that he’s our first African-American governor, and just the second in post-Reconstruction America.

And yes, I accept the proposition that Patrick’s stands on the issues were not as hazy as his critics would have it. His Web site is loaded with position statements, which one day I might actually get around to reading. But it’s nevertheless true that he refused to be pinned down too precisely, which will stand him in good stead now that he has to deliver. His repeated assertion that he has “no plan to raise taxes” is a classic example of keeping your options open.

Whither Kerry Healey? She’s not better than her campaign, because it was her campaign. But she could become better than her campaign, and, despite her pathetic performance, she might have a future. I was struck by Jon Keller‘s assessment on Channel 38 last night: by all rights she ought to be finished. Yet the Republican Party is in such dire straits that she’s one of the few remaining figures who could pick up the pieces.

First, though, she might try apologizing for insulting the public’s intelligence for two months with one of the most negative, disingenuous campaigns in the history of the state.

Media Nation is officially nonpartisan. But I’m not going to pretend to be anything but pleased by the Democrats’ taking back the House and possibly the Senate, too.

Still, there are risks involved. Losing would have been too demoralizing for Democratic Party leaders even to contemplate; but winning puts the Democrats in the position of letting themselves become a symbol of all that’s wrong heading into the 2008 presidential campaign.

Thus the Democrats’ first task must be to figure out how they’re going to manage the media. We’ve all seen how it works. Republican talking points dominate Fox News — essentially a party organ — as well conservative media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. Folks at mainstream news organizations, ever terrified of being accused of liberal bias, give voice to those talking points so as to seem balanced, even as they ignore or play down Democratic talking points.

That’s how John Kerry’s idiotic joke, a nonstory, came to dominate the headlines for a couple of days last week, while President Bush’s over-the-top accusations that Democratic opponents of the war in Iraq were guilty of something akin to treason were all but ignored. At a minimum, the Democrats need to emulate Bill Clinton by emphasizing a positive message — but responding like crazed weasels when attacked.

Here are three danger spots the Democrats are going to have to think through immediately. Indeed, if they haven’t already, then they’ll be in trouble by this weekend.

Speaker Pelosi. All across the country, Republicans attempted to hang on in part by casting Nancy Pelosi as a “San Francisco liberal” who would seek to transform the United States into a gay commune. It didn’t work, but that doesn’t mean the Republicans won’t keep trying. And now that Pelosi is going to become much better known, the attacks on her may prove to be more effective in 2008 than they’ve been in ’06.

To combat this, Pelosi needs to be a highly visible presence — a reassuring figure whose appeal cuts across ideological boundaries, if not necessarily across party lines. She is said to have made it clear to Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., that he’s not going to hold impeachment hearings. That’s smart. No matter how badly the White House has mismanaged the war, the fact is that substantial numbers of Democrats voted in favor of it.

More important, to invoke the old political cliché, she needs to define herself before the Republicans do it for her. She may think she’s well-known. She’s not. At a minimum, she’s got to start making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows and raise her visibility. If she performs well, she’ll be an asset to her party regardless of what Sean Hannity says about her.

Democratic committee chairs. Although Pelosi was the principal symbol invoked by Republicans in the just-ended campaign, they also went hard at liberal Democratic congressmen in line for committee chairs. It’s no surprise that their targets included Barney Frank of Massachusetts, who’s gay, and Charlie Rangel, who’s African-American.

Here the Democrats should concentrate on putting forth an agenda on issues that unite the party. Democrats elected yesterday hold differing views on cultural issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion rights and gun control. So why dive into those issues unless it’s absolutely necessary?

This isn’t an argument for moving to the right. I suspect the Democrats can be as left as they like on the war, the environment, corporate malfeasance and pocketbook issues such as the minimum wage. Rather, it’s an argument for respecting the diversity of the party.

Oversight. The Republicans have been remarkably successful in recent years at casting anyone who even asks questions about national security as unpatriotic. The House has now gained subpoena power, and apparently Pelosi intends to use it in order to examine the conduct of the war. Good.

But the Democrats need to remind the public at every opportunity that this is what’s supposed to happen in wartime — that the war effort would almost certainly be going better today if investigations had taken place earlier.

A few months ago Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks, appearing on NPR’s “On Point” to discuss his book “Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq,” blamed Congress more than any other player for abdicating its duties by failing to exercise any oversight. Among other things, he noted that, during World War II, Democratic Sen. Harry Truman held hearings into military contracting scandals presided over by a Democratic president and was hailed as a hero.

During the Vietnam War, another Democratic senator, J. William Fulbright, held hearings that helped fuel the antiwar movement even as a fellow Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, was in the White House.

In other words, oversight is not unpatriotic.

I’m skeptical of Gannett‘s motives — could this just be a way to load up on free content? — but its plunge into citizen journalism, reported today in the Washington Post, is potentially of enormous significance.

Here is the Web site of Gannett’s News-Press, in southwest Florida, where the company has been rolling out parts of its citizen-journalism initiative. And check out the special interactive section of the chain’s Des Moines Register.

Here it is, Election Day, and Media Nation is seriously overcommitted. Well, it’s all over but the voting anyway.

If there’s one thing to keep an eye on, I’d say it’s the unfolding story about Republican-directed “robocalls,” which may violate campaign-finance laws. Josh Marshall has been following this maniacally, and summarizes the issue well here.

The New York Times carries this report.

This is far off track for Media Nation, but what the heck — Dan Gillmor has asked me to link to a post of state-by-state laws and regulations in case you’re thinking of heading out to your friendly neighborhood polling place with a camera today. So there you go.

I don’t have the time or energy right now to do too much digging, but here’s enough to get you started. I just received an e-mail from a service called Blognetnews.com/Mass, which claims:

We are going to use your feeds and the feeds of top bloggers from your online community to create new content and information that will organize this slice of the Internet making it work better for bloggers and their readers.

Well, maybe. For what it’s worth, I was able to learn that the domain name blognetnews.com is owned by one David Mastio of Chesapeake, Va., the same guy whose name appears at the bottom of the e-mail.

Further investigation reveals that Mastio is a former editorial writer for USA Today, a former speechwriter for President Bush, and a frequent contributor to conservative publications such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. (Not to be too coy — I Googled him. This ain’t rocket science.)

Blognetnews.com/Mass is part of InOpinion.com, which is “an opinion syndicate” Mastio founded “aimed at helping newspapers attract young, net-savvy readers.”

“The Blogs of BNN” have a decidedly GOP-leaning tilt to them. But it seems to be pretty open — apparently it will list any Boston blog in exchange for a link.

Worth watching.

U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Boston, didn’t invent the lie about Al Gore’s claiming to have “invented” the Internet. But Lynch repeats it on his just-unveiled Web site. (Via Blue Mass. Group.)

When Jack Welch and Jack Connors made their interest in the Boston Globe known, you can be sure they understood this: Though the New York Times Co. might not have any interest in selling, the Welch bid would create enough turmoil to put the entire company in play. And when that happens, people like Welch and Connors usually benefit.

The strongest argument against the Globe’s being sold is that the Sulzberger family supposedly doesn’t want to sell it — and the Sulzbergers control the only class of Times Co. stock that matters. Now the Sulzbergers have an insurrection on their hands, as one of the out-in-the-cold shareholders is protesting his status as a second-class investor.

Can the Sulzbergers be forced to do anything about this? No, not really. But they are not immune from being pressured — especially if all this turmoil begins to take a toll on the stock price.

The John DePetro firing today continues to get attention from both dailies. DePetro lost his job as a talk-show host on WRKO Radio (AM 680) yesterday after having referred to Green-Rainbow Party gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross as a “fat lesbian” the day before.

The Herald’s Jessica Heslam manages to break quite a bit of news in her article, reporting that:

• DePetro’s engineer was also fired because he’d supposedly been tipped off beforehand that DePetro was going to go off on Ross and did nothing, a charge that DePetro denies.
• A major WRKO advertiser, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, had been complaining about DePetro’s anti-gay shtick for quite some time.
• DePetro’s ratings were not only bad, but were trending downward.
• DePetro has hired a lawyer. (OK, everybody hires a lawyer, so maybe that’s not news.)

The Globe goes with think piece that’s heavy on what it all means but light on news. Andrea Estes and Suzanne Ryan seem to take DePetro at his word that management had no reason to fire his engineer, quoting him as comparing that action to “clubbing a baby seal.”

As for advertiser pressure, the Globe offers this, from Talkers Magazine publisher Michael Harrison: “You never know what’s going on behind the scenes. Sometimes a host is on thin ice with management and they use any infraction as an excuse to sever ties.” Indeed.

The Globe does have a fuller account of what DePetro actually said. Estes and Ryan write:

According to a tape of his Thursday show, DePetro was venting about the previous night’s gubernatorial debate. “I could go now a lifetime without Grace Ross,” he said. “She has nerve. This whole business of ‘well since we’re being ignored,'” he said, mocking Ross’s effort to get equal time in the debate.

“No, you’re irrelevant. Get off the stage!” he continued, directing his remarks to Ross. “I couldn’t stand her at the end. At one point I was about to yell: “Will somebody tell that fat lesbian to shut up….

“Shut up. Go home,” DePetro said. “Burger King is looking for another third-shift person to work the grill. Enough.”

“I was traumatized by you being on the stage,” he said of Ross.

What legal grounds would DePetro have in a business in which everyone knows you can be fired for any reason at any time? This is sheer speculation, but I would imagine that, by labeling DePetro as so homophobic that he had to be terminated, management has hurt DePetro’s chances of landing another job.

Given that what DePetro said is no worse than — or not even as bad as — things you hear on Howie Carr’s WRKO show every day, or over on sister station WEEI (AM 850), he might be able to argue that he’s been unfairly tarnished.

In an interview with the Globe , the Shorenstein Center‘s Alex Jones says of DePetro’s rant, “That seems like well within what has come to be acceptable language on talk radio. Certainly it’s uncivil and rude, but when was that not what they were looking for?”

It’s hard to disagree.