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EARLY-MARCH 2009
More Bad News
Picking up where I left off in the Mid-
February issue (See: www. fullertonobserver.com),
news is in trouble and newspapers
in even more trouble. And yes, I
am aware of the irony that in my first sentence
I named the problem, the cause of
our immanent demise, and I thereby exacerbated
it. I referred you to the Internet!
Now I am not so old that I hate or fear
the Internet. I am relatively net and computer
savvy; but if I am a convert, I am a
recalcitrant convert and not filled with the
convert’s traditional zeal. I
accept the inevitable but do not
joyously surrender.
Newspapers are, in fact,
doomed. We will not be
spilling ink onto dead trees,
driving them around town and
then hurling them onto driveways
in the future—in the very
near future. The demise of
newspapers is ordained but
they have participated in moving
the date up. Instead of jogging,
eating low fat and getting plenty of
rest, newspapers have feasted on a high
fat, high sugar diet of empty calories and
burned both candles and bridges at both
ends.
Our city dailies could have prolonged
their useful lives if they had remained
family owned. They could have made
money on their original cost basis. But
once large groups started buying and consolidating,
the die was cast. The
Chandlers would be making money on
the LA Times. However, when the
Tribune had to pay the retail purchase
price, the income of the Times couldn’t
support the debt. Then Zell bought the
Tribune, and even after leveraging their
pension plan, can’t service his debt. Yes,
profits would have fallen for even original
owners because of the movement of
advertising to the net—to Craig’s List and
eBay. But the papers could have lived
longer.
Word is out that Hearst is looking to
sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle.
It is already in a semi-partnership with
MediaNews, out of Denver, which is also
having debt service problems that threaten
the existence of a hundred newspapers
in its shrinking empire. Their individual
local papers might have thrived had not
the empire expanded and, like our other
bubbles and empires, burst.
So now the large dailies and the smaller
semi-local chains are cutting back. They
are reducing pages, letting go their most
senior writers and editors and taking more
and more syndicated and news-service
material. The city dailies, large and small,
are losing their connection to their communities.
They are losing talent, content
and context.
Out of My Mind
AUGUST JonDobrer@mac.com
2008
by Jonathan Dobrer © 2009
In a desperate effort to stay technically
alive, they are (in corporate-speak) “merging
their synergies” and moving their
community staff people to central locations.
No one is left to cover the high
school play or sports. No one is going to
PTA meetings or to the city council. One
paper is trying to cover Pasadena City
Council meetings by web cam to a
reporter in Mumbai. No, I’m not making
this up.
This is a doomed strategy. LA Times
raised its street price by 50% while cutting
back on pages and killing their separate
local section (named California until
March 1, but was also Metro,
Orange, Valley and
Westside). As you read this,
it will have been merged in
front with already merged
Op-Ed and editorial. The
biggest decision left to the
suits in the executive suites at
the Times is where in the
world to put their obits? This
is one still profitable part of
print. Do you put it in the
front, in the sports, the business
or entertainment? There is serious
executive time being devoted to where the
obits will go as (and you could see this
coming, right?) they should be preparing
their own obit.
This is sad but unavoidable. There is little
point in fighting for the preservation of
the buggy whip manufacturing industry,
teaching Morse code, or trying to resuscitate
Generalissimo Franco. Dead is dead.
This is not a tragedy, just sad in its prematurity.
I don’t want to sound like the
last carver of cuneiform, “Those kids.
What value is ink on papyrus? It is lazy.
Only carving in stone has lasting value.”
Well, yes, ink feels better, more permanent
and real than electrons, but that is a
generational feeling. The news can be as
good or better electronically delivered.
There is no a priori superiority of ink over
electrons. The deeper issue is content.
Who will pay reporters to gather information?
Who will fact check and edit?
Who will decide what news is important?
The news needs professionals for the coverage
of national and international news.
As for local, well, the local and hyper-local
papers do just fine. They (we Observers)
cover the local theatres, school board, city
council, crimes, water quality and housing
issues just fine.
In ten years city dailies will be gone.
Maybe there will be two printed national
papers (New York Times and USA
Today), the weekly national magazines
will be monthly but local papers with
local advertisers will still be around. They
will never make a fortune, but unless they
are so foolish as to merge, they will be economically
viable. And that, finally, is
some good news.
Who will pay
reporters
to gather
information?
Who will
decide
what news is
important?
WAR COSTS in Life & Money: YEAR SIX
• $600 Billion
• 90,777
• 4,250
• 45,298
• 660
IN IRAQ
Cost of The War in Iraq -rounded down ($341.4 million a day)
www.costofwar.com (02/12/2009)
Civilians killed by military in Iraq
www.iraqbodycount.org (02/25/2009)
US Soldier Deaths in Iraq: (DoD 02/25/2009)
US Soldiers wounded
*(DOD 02/18/09) www.icasualties.org/oif
IN AFGHANISTAN
US Soldiers killed (02/26/09) www.icasualties.org/oef/
VIGNETTES
by Natalie Kennedy
How We Made it
Through the
Depression
One of the earliest memories I have is
that, Herbert Hoover was not only the
greatest president ever, but by golly, he
looked a lot like my Dad. My father
claimed to be an "Independent." But, as I
grew up I noticed that all my dad’s choices
happened to be republicans. I tell you
this because my fourth year of life was the
same year Hoover became president. We
thought this was great. My parents were
on top of the ladder financially, as my dad
was treasurer of Massachusetts Fire
Insurance Co. We had it all. We had
moved from Rhode Island to
Massachusetts years before for my dad’s
great job.
The next five years were a horror story.
It was the Great Depression in the US.
My dad and everyone we knew lost their
work and all their savings. It took us a
while to sell our rather spacious home on
3 acres of land for half what we had paid
for it. My folks decided we should go
back to Rhode Island, where at least there
would be more jobs.
A dear old friend owned a nice
Victorian home. His family lived on the
2nd floor and he offered us the 1st floor as
guests 'til Dad got a job. The next years
were job hunting years and we heard very
little about the president that looked like
Dad.
We settled in. Roosevelt became president
in 1933. Streets were still full of
bread lines and sadness was here too. But
for us kids it was O.K. Our parents and
our good friends made the difference.
In the mornings my mother would be
up first, shoveling coal into the furnace.
Then we all had hot oatmeal cereal (all we
wanted). Our neighborhood was full of
fruit trees and we all shared and enjoyed
peaches, plums, apples, and cherries. We
planted food. I especially remember our
wonderful tomatoes, corn, and more.
My silent suffering mother baked cupcakes
and doughnuts to sell, which my sister
Phyllis and I delivered on our bikes to
neighbors who seemed to love them. Our
neighbors were mostly older and not quite
as hard hit as we were. Mother kept
telling us the good things that the money
would be used for, plus what great fun it
was doing it. I remember thinking as
long as we had our parent’s love, my dolls,
MUSINGS
by Gene Walsh
American Culture?
Following WWII and through the Cold
War, the United States, Russia, and China
have vied for world leadership. We have
seen the USSR lose some of its role with
the break up into separate independent
states but Communism remains strong in
many parts of the world including China.
American culture has been expanded by
US business enterprises and by (not
always successfully) our use of our superior
military force to convert the world to
“democracy.”
However, the expansion of KFC,
Starbucks, and hamburger chains is not
what American culture is all about.
Should we not be exporting our living
standards, ideas of freedom, educational
systems and tolerance as the way to a bet-
Fullerton Observer Page 3
and my great metal doll bed, all was well.
Mother made all our clothes. It seemed
like when kids at school wore long dresses
we wore ours a bit shorter and when they
had short short dresses ours were a bit too
long. But my mom made sure we had
nice dresses and we spent most of our
doughnut money on good oxford laced
shoes.
Dad was brought up in Providence and
his fisherman friends gave him fish every
night----so we had a good supper right
before bed. Hood Milk Company delivered
a huge can of milk to us about every
3 days (it had a couple of quarts of cream
settled on top). My dad promised to pay
everyone back when he could and he
eventually did just that.
One of my dad’s first job offers was
from Narragansett Brewery. He came
home and at dinner told us we had to vote
on whether he should take the job because
he had to accept or reject the offer the
next morning. Poor Dad who was silently
hoping that there might be an exception,
was faced with a “No” vote from the
family and had to turn the job offer down.
To explain that no vote, I must go back
to Nova Scotia, back into MacLean history.
You see my grandmother was the big
wheel of the "Womans Christian
Temperance Union" and had trained her
family and their offspring that alcohol was
the root of all evil. Now, we might starve,
but we all knew that you have to put
beliefs first.
The next day Dad went down and
signed up for W.P.A. and was immediately
hired as an accountant at the Newport
Naval Station in South County, R.I. It
was the beginning of a hard won comeback!
My dad had to go through bankruptcy
but in the end he paid all the companies
back and received many awards for
it, thereby regaining some of his pride.
Well, in our house Roosevelt became our
hero and dad had at last proved he was an
Independent after all (not to be confused
with democrat).
Thank you President Roosevelt for the
“Works Progress Administration.” The
WPA not only brought us new infrastructure
but put people back to work on jobs
they could do best. There were even jobs
for music teachers and actors to train children.
I took piano lessons that I could not
have afforded while these artists could still
share their gifts.
Eventually my dad started a real estate
company and we bought a home. He
swore he would never leave Rhode Island
again...but when I got married and moved
to California, Mother and Dad decided to
come also. Then our whole family followed
and we all ended up here!
ter more peaceful world? This morning I
read two stories in the LA Times which
made me question if the articles reflected
American culture and what we really consider
important.
Number one was headed, “Schools are
struggling with cuts.” It said “Districts
across the state face decisions to lay off
teachers, increase class size and eliminate
programs.” Our society is in a recession
and we refuse to sacrifice (by paying taxes)
to educate the next generation. Does this
mean Americans will fall behind the rest
of the world in technology, research and
our standard of living?
Number two was in the sports section,
“Carroll of USC tops salary list.” Football
coach Pete Carroll “earned $4.4 million in
total compensation, four times as much as
USC President Steven B. Sample.”
Enough said! Our culture apparently
places more value on a football coach than
it does on educating its next generation of
citizens, and we expect to continue to be a
world leader?