West of Twin Peaks Exclusive
Clint Reilly
Why Readers Reject Newspapers
By Clint Reilly
Newspapers used to print money for their owners. Some – like Richard Thieriot, the former owner of the San Francisco Chronicle – did better than others.
Thieriot was smiling like the cat that ate the canary when I spoke with him at former State Senator Quentin Kopp’s recent 80th birthday party. Thieriot’s family sold the Chronicle and KRON television for more than $1 billion at the market’s zenith in 2000. Hearst Corporation paid $660 million for the Chronicle alone.
Today, rumors abound about the Chronicle’s financial picture. Including annual losses, Hearst has likely invested more than $1 billion in the Chronicle, yet the paper is only worth a fraction of that amount. Facing a dismal economic picture, Hearst recently offered buyouts to more than 100 staffers, the second time it has done so in the last 18 months.
But the Chronicle is not alone. The entire newspaper business is in free fall. The Internet has stolen both readers and advertisers, and a grinding recession has further curtailed ad spending. And as younger readers flock online, circulation continues to plummet.
With declining revenues come repeated staff cuts. The papers are even shrinking physically, and vital coverage of local government has suffered in many communities.
Sam Zell, the real estate mogul who led the $13.6 billion buyout of the Tribune Company – which includes the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times – said, “Because newspapers have historically been monopolies, they have been insulated from reality. Newspapers have to respond to their customers.”
When papers failed to respond to their customers, Craigslist did. The website devoured newspapers’ classified advertising business by offering a more efficient model. I spoke with Craig Newmark, Craigslist’s founder, at a Barack Obama fundraiser we both attended recently. Newmark told me that poor journalism and lousy newspapers are digging their own grave – not Craigslist. While Craig may be too humble, others share his disdain for an industry seemingly incapable of responding to its first real competitive threat in 100 years.
Monopoly journalism allowed many owners, editors and journalists to fall out of touch long before the present crisis.
As a political consultant, I repeatedly witnessed bizarre behavior at newspapers that no other business would ever allow. Some reporters and columnists were frequently drunk or on drugs on the job. Such conduct was not simply tolerated, it was condoned. These third-rate Hunter Thompsons screwed up appointments and scrambled facts but were never called to account for their mistakes, incivility or disruptive behavior. Violent behavior by a top editor was even defended by the company and the editor promoted. He would have been summarily fired anywhere else.
Consider the following events in 2000 involving the purchase of the Chronicle by Hearst Corp, then owner of the SF Examiner:
The publisher of the Examiner offers to “horse trade” favorable editorial coverage for the mayor during his reelection campaign in exchange for the mayor’s support of the sale.
When the publisher admits this publicly, he is fired by Hearst, even though emails and hand-written notes indicate that he informed the president and chairman of the company of exactly what he was doing. Hearst later pays the ousted publisher a settlement reported to be near $10 million.
A federal judge accuses both the president and chairman of lying about what happened. The editor-in-chief and the editorial page editor issue public denials that anything improper ever occurred. To “prove” it, the newspaper hires the former general counsel of Chevron to write a report exonerating the newspaper of any wrongdoing.
The final report – predictably stating that no breach of ethics occurred – is printed prominently in the newspaper, even though the lead adviser to the investigation, a well-respected journalist, refuses to sign it in dissent.
Years later, the now Hearst-owned Chronicle hires the now former mayor as a Sunday columnist.
Despite these clearly documented events involving the paper’s owners, publisher and editors, the San Francisco Chronicle would have us all believe that this type of behavior has nothing to do with Bay Area residents abandoning the paper in droves.
I wonder.
Clint Reilly writes a column which appears as a public service in every MediaNews Group, Inc. newspaper in the Bay Area each Tuesday and at www.clintreilly.com
Followship, not Leadership
West of Twin Peaks Observer Visitor Editorial
By Clint Reilly
Do leaders really lead in the political arena or do they follow?
I think our system elects followers and calls them leaders. This creates both a false perception and a false expectation.
The false perception is that politicians have answers to our problems. The false expectation is that politicians will pursue answers to our problems. The fact that neither is precisely true drives Americans’ disillusionment with their government when their expectations are unmet.
I know my analysis is cynical and not universally true. But let me explain how I arrive at my conclusion.
I can still remember a well-known client during my political consulting days saying to me, “Clint, tell me what I believe.”
Contrary to what we are taught in our civics classes, political discourse rarely starts with issue research or personal conviction. It usually begins when a politician commissions a detailed poll to ascertain where voters stand on critical issues and legislation.
Now that large news networks and newspapers conduct their own polls, voters are familiar with polling mechanics and formats. In addition to polls, focus groups pre-test messages and viewpoints to gauge the reaction of real voters in advance.
This “presearch” then shapes the positions of the politicians who commission it. As a political consultant, I wrote countless polls and attended easily a hundred focus groups.
Political communication between elected officials and voters is not an argument about the truth. Clarence Darrow argued facts and made his case to juries. But that’s not how campaign ads work.
Campaign commercials are designed to reinforce what voters already believe; they aren’t meant to educate or provide new information. When a TV commercial contradicts the established beliefs of the viewers, the voters not only reject the message but also the messenger.
Politicians follow public opinion and echo it through campaign commercials, speeches and even legislation once elected. This means that much of the actual discourse between elected officials and citizens originates from the citizens.
That doesn’t make political figures dishonest; it just means their role is different from that of a “leader.” Their contribution is to translate ideas into action. They are what historian James MacGregor Burns calls “transactional brokers” who see the best ideas from disparate factions and forge compromises that move society forward incrementally.
So, are politicians leaders by any true definition of leadership? No.
Politicians are forced to function within the parameters of public opinion. They can push out the edges. But go too far and they find themselves in a graveyard.
Ask presidential candidate Walter Mondale if he was hailed as a hero for telling Americans that taxes needed to be raised. Why, in the face of California’s $15 billion deficit, is Governor Schwarzenegger or any statewide politician so afraid to raise taxes or challenge the deadly fiscal limitations of Proposition 13?
This may be a relatively new historical phenomenon. Before the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, voters primarily read their information in newspapers. Unable to see events personally, voters relied on elected officials to be their surrogates, to make tough choices in their stead. Character weighed heavily on the scale when voters cast their ballots.
But in the era of constant TV news coverage, voters are overwhelmed with information. Armed with a false feeling of expertise, many voters mistakenly equate ideological agreement with character. In this political jungle, survival depends on mimicking citizens’ views rather than shaping them.
Who, if any, are the leaders of our era?
Our real leaders are in medicine saving life, in the arts celebrating life, and in philanthropy protecting life. Citizens within the environmental movement, computing, biotechnology and architecture fields have produced breakthroughs that are changing the world.
Politicians make the rules. But unlike real leaders, they are rarely allowed to break them.
Clint Reilly writes a column which appears as a public service in every MediaNews Group, Inc. newspaper in the Bay Area each Tuesday and at www.clintreilly.com
