Media Nation

The Boston Globe today hits the Boston Herald where it hurts — reporting not just that the Herald’s circulation, like the Globe’s (and like most newspapers), is plummeting, but that its numbers are squishy-soft.

According to figures compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and reported by the Globe, the Herald’s weekday circulation fell by 4 percent, from 240,759 to 230,543, compared to the same six-month period a year earlier. On Sunday, the situation at One Herald Square is much worse: circulation is down nearly 14 percent, from 152,813 to 131,833.

But that’s not the heart of Robert Gavin’s Globe article. Here’s the real shot across Herald publisher Pat Purcell’s bow:

[T]he Herald has been relying increasingly on so-called bulk sales to bolster circulation. In those sales, single parties, such as a hotel, school, airline, or other business, buy many papers, typically at a discount, and distribute them, often for free. Bulk sales accounted for 19 percent of the Herald’s daily circulation, or almost one in five papers.

Traditionally, advertisers have looked less favorably on bulk sales, because it’s difficult to track how many papers end up in the hands of readers, and who those readers are, industry specialists said. Bulk buyers must pay at least 25 percent of the papers’ basic price in order to be counted as paid circulation….

The 19 percent of the Herald’s daily circulation accounted for by bulk sales was up from 11 percent a year ago. In contrast, the Globe cut its daily bulk sales by 37 percent, and they accounted for only about 7 percent of daily circulation, compared to 10 percent a year ago.

The Herald has been slamming the Globe’s circulation woes since Oct. 20, when the Globe’s corporate parent, the New York Times Co., released ABC figures showing that the Globe’s circulation was down by about 8 percent on weekdays and on Sunday. Just this past Saturday, the Herald’s Jesse Noyes poked fun at a New York-area circulation drive apparently aimed at selling Globes to Yankees fans.

The Globe, meanwhile, has not exactly been shy about flogging the latest rumors that the Herald and its suburban community-newspaper chain may be for sale.

Coming tomorrow: The Herald fights back?

From the New York Observer:

It looks like Judith Miller won’t be returning to the New York Times newsroom Monday morning. Last week, the Times asked Miller to cut short her leave of absence and return to the paper Monday or Tuesday in an “unspecified editing” role, a source with knowledge of the situation said.

Making her edit? Cruel and unusual punishment, I’d say — both for Miller and for whoever’s unlucky enough to find him- or herself being edited by the wayward scribe.

Barton Gellman’s in-depth report on the administration’s use of national-security letters, in Sunday’s Washington Post, raises a number of fascinating and disturbing questions. Here’s one: From the time that the Patriot Act was approved in the days following 9/11, civil libertarians have railed against Section 215, which would, among other things, allow federal agents to snoop on library and bookstore records with virtually no judicial oversight. Now it appears that those critics may have been looking in the wrong place.

Gellman begins his article by recounting an ongoing struggle in Windsor, Conn., over a national-security letter that the FBI sent to a library official ordering him to turn over “‘all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person’ who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away.”

Former attorney general John Ashcroft liked to brag that Section 215 had never actually been invoked. For instance, here is a CBS News report from September 2003 in which Ashcroft was quoted as saying, “The number of times section 215 has been used to date is zero.” That assertion, based as it was on secret information, seemed dubious. (Among other things, the Patriot Act forbids anyone who’s been subpoenaed under Section 215 from making that information public.) In any case, when the Windor situation came to light earlier this year, it appeared that — at the very least — the count had risen from zero to one.

But wait. It turns out that the Windor library order was invoked not under Section 215 but under Section 505 — the provision that allows for the increased use of national-security letters. For instance, see this report from the American Library Association, which has been following the case. And, as Gellman observes:

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters — one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people — are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

In a 2003 assessment of the Patriot Act, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Julia Turner wrote:

This section authorizes the attorney general or a delegate to compel holders of your personal records to turn them over to the government, simply by writing a “national security” letter. Section 505 has garnered a lot less national attention than Section 215 — the library records section of the act — which may be why it is invoked a lot more often.

Maybe Ashcroft was right — maybe civil libertarians did get too worked up about Section 215. But if that’s the case, it’s mainly because Section 505 was the more dangerous provision all along.

The San Francisco Chronicle yesterday carried a horrifying tale about a 4-year-old boy who’s dying from a rare form of dwarfism. He can’t see the one doctor who might be able to save his life because his HMO won’t let him.

I posted an item about this on Dwarfblog, part of LPA Online, Little People of America’s Web site, which I edit. You can read it here.

Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Oct. 22:

I’ve always liked Judy Miller. I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate’s Becky Sharp.

The traits she has that drive many reporters at The Times crazy — her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur — never bothered me. I enjoy operatic types.

Eileen McNamara, Boston Globe, Nov. 6:

I’ve always liked Maureen Dowd. I have often wondered what Dorothy Parker would have made of her 21st-century impersonator.

The traits she has that drive so many feminists crazy — the red hair dye and the fishnet stockings — never bothered me. I enjoy flamboyant types.

Good stuff from McNamara, a columnist not generally known for her sense of humor.

Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón today weighs in with part two of his assessment of the Globe-Red Sox relationship.

His lead: “For an ombudsman, last week was pretty close to The Perfect Storm.” Well, fear not: Chacón manages to stay high and dry. Incredibly, he doesn’t even make an attempt to assess Dan Shaughnessy’s role in last week’s resignation of Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein.

It gets worse. Chacón closes with this:

Some Globe executives felt my last column accused the publisher and president of violating company policy by accepting Red Sox World Series rings. That was not my intent. Times Co. policy allows the rings to be accepted as a “business courtesy” because of its equity share in the team.

Well, “some Globe executives” are wrong. In fact, Chacón made no such accusation in his earlier piece. Here’s what he wrote:

Times Co. policy, which applies to all Globe employees, states that business gifts must be ”nominal in value,” not exactly how I would describe a diamond-encrusted ring.

[Globe publisher Richard] Gilman said last week that the ring, which he recently decided to put in a Globe display case rather than keep in his own possession, was not a gift. [Globe president Richard] Daniels declined to comment publicly.

“The expense of the rings was borne by the (NESV) partnership, including, therefore, The New York Times Co., meaning that the rings could hardly be considered gifts,” Gilman wrote, adding that the rings should be considered taxable income.

I’m no accountant, and he may be technically right, but accepting the rings was wrong for public perceptions about the newspaper.

The ideal gesture — and the best example for Globe employees — would have been for the publisher and president to respectfully decline the jewelry, recognizing the possible harm it could cause to readers’ opinions of the Globe.

The next best move would be to give the rings back.

Apparently Chacón isn’t even allowed to raise an issue and let the publisher address it without having to backtrack two weeks later. I can’t imagine that anyone who read part one believed Gilman and Daniels had violated any sort of Times Co. policy regarding the acceptance of gifts. They are, after all, business partners with the Red Sox thanks to the Times Co.’s 17 percent ownership share in the team.

That’s the real issue, and Chacón was right to address it. His first column was respectful but tough. This one is, uh, respectful.

Matthew Felling writes:

When I took the occasional hot-air balloon ride with the more blustery Sean or Joe, I always knew that at the end of the night I’d make use of “NewsNight” — and more importantly, Aaron Brown’s sense of handling the news — to tether me back to The Real World.

Yes, I confess to not having joined the “Cult Of Personality” surrounding Mr. Cooper as much as some. (“Gosh, he’s hawt!”) And yes, I know many of Aaron Brown’s negative nicknames around the newsrooms he has worked in. (That Space Shuttle golf trip debacle didn’t help.) But on camera, Brown was peerless (at least among the motley crew of night-time cable gabbers) at making sense of the world and asking the question that punctured the subtleties of spin.

Way, way back in June 2002 — a lifetime in the narrow little world of cable news — you could actually take sides in a substantive news war every weeknight at 10. On MSNBC, Brian Williams anchored an hour-long newscast as he prepared for the day that Tom Brokaw would retire. And on CNN, Aaron Brown hosted “NewsNight,” then in its pre-Klein glory. Those were the days. Here’s part of something I wrote at the time:

CNN’s NewsNight, anchored by Aaron Brown, is not perfect by any means, and much of the reason has to do with Brown himself, who alternates between refreshing candor and annoying self-absorption. But NewsNight, which debuted on October 15 (Brown himself began work at CNN on September 11, less than an hour after the first tower was hit), works as an invigorating alternative to the traditional newscast, with longer stories, some attitude and edge, and the arch presence of Brown, who, despite being 10 years older than Williams, comes across as an entire generation younger.

Not to wax too enthusiastic. NewsNight has been devoting a lot of time to the trial involving the murder of young Danielle van Dam, mainly because the lawyer for the neighbor accused of killing her is making an issue of the exotic and varied sex life indulged in by Danielle’s parents. And Brown gave an entire hour to the arrest of Robert Blake — something that he apologized for the next night. At its best, though, the show comes across as a less-boring version of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer or the television equivalent of All Things Considered.

Harry Shearer has a worthwhile post on Brown’s demise.

Now, please think about what has happened. We have three all-news cable channels. There are three prime-time hours per night — 8 to 11 p.m. And CNN brainiac Jonathan Klein has decided to blow up the sole 60-minute segment out of those nine hours that was an actual, you know, newscast. (MSNBC’s “Countdown” definitely has its moments, but it’s more “The Daily Show” than it is Edward R. Murrow. Long live Keith Olbermann, but don’t call it a newscast.)

To his very, very slight credit, Klein is sticking to a newscast at 10, with Anderson Cooper as the new anchor. But, whether you like Cooper or not, he simply doesn’t bring the intelligent, analytical approach of Aaron Brown. Worse, the program has been expanded from one to two hours, which usually means that they’ll spend much of the first hour hyping stories that will appear in the second hour.

Klein has been destroying CNN. Brown was one of the network’s few remaining symbols of quality. The only good that could come out of this would be if Klein drives down the value of CNN so much that Ted Turner can afford to buy it back from Time Warner.

I realize not everyone shares my enthusiasm for Aaron Brown’s unusual blend of intelligence, irony and befuddlement. At its best — that is, before Jonathan Klein started mucking around with it — Brown’s “NewsNight” show on CNN was the closest thing on television to NPR. Not nearly as good, mind you, but similar in tone and lack of condescension.

It’s been clear for some time that Klein wanted to whack Brown. I’d been hoping that Klein would get whacked first. It didn’t happen. Brown is out, to be replaced by Klein’s golden boy, Anderson Cooper. The only reason to watch CNN (other than when Larry King has a good guest) is gone.

I’d make Brown the anchor of an expanded network newscast. But I know it’s not going to happen. I don’t detest Cooper, and I wish him well. But I won’t be watching much, either.

Barring a major development, I’m taking a rest from the Theo wars. But I do want to remind you that, this Sunday, Boston Globe ombudsman Richard Chacón is supposed to weigh in with part two of his take on the business relationship between the New York Times Co. and the Red Sox, and how that affects the Times Co.-owned Globe. Forget the sports section — go straight to the editorial page.

Part one, I thought, showed some guts: Chacón opined that Globe publisher Richard Gilman and president Richard Daniels should give back their World Series rings “to protect the paper’s credibility.” But the larger problem isn’t that Gilman and Daniels accepted the rings — the issue is that they are business associates of the Red Sox, which quite naturally led them to believe there was nothing wrong with taking the jewelry in the first place. This is about high-stakes business ties, not rings.

Mind you, the contretemps of the past week strike me more as having to do with the Globe’s being the dominant newspaper in town than it does with any ownership connection, and with the scrappy Boston Herald’s being in a position to pounce on the Globe’s missteps. Still, what people at the Globe — and the Times Co. — have to realize is that every time something like this happens, critics are going to beat them over the head with the ownership issue.

Silly me — I always thought the real problem would be when the Red Sox tried to move ahead on the business side, putting the squeeze on city and state officials for land and money. The Globe’s perceived interest could potentially become a huge problem in a situation like that, even if the paper’s coverage was properly fair and neutral.

Baseball? Well, that’s just fun and games. Except when it isn’t.

Sorry, Mr. Mayor. Theo’s not staying.