Media Nation

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.

Jessica Heslam reports on the Herald’s Web site that WRKO has canned John DePetro for his idiotic remark about Grace Ross. Boston.com has the statement from Entercom, ‘RKO’s corporate owner. (Via Hub Politics, which, naturally, is defending DePetro.)

I’m not going to stick up for anyone who goes around calling someone a “fat lesbian” on the air. But the hypocrisy is rank. It should be interesting to hear what Howie Carr says today.

But this editorial from the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union gets at the larger truth.

Globe columnist Steve Bailey, having broken the news that Jack Welch and his rich buddies were interested in buying the Boston Globe, reports today that it’s not likely to happen. Why? No one — certainly not the New York Times Co. — is going to sell the Globe when it’s at the bottom of the market.

Still, Bailey offers some intriguing stuff on how it could happen. Throw in the Times Co.’s Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Boston.com and its share of the Red Sox, and suddenly you’re talking about a price that would approach the $1.1 billion the Sulzbergers paid for the Globe in the early 1990s (not when you factor in inflation, though).

My prediction: The Times Co. will sell in two or three years, when the newspaper economy has recovered enough for the Globe to bring a better price. And Jack Welch will not be the owner.

Clarification: I wrote that Bailey “broke” the story, but the Herald had it at more or less the same time.