Mittmentum 2012! That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.
Other than President-Elect Obama’s full hour on Meet the Press, the Sunday shows were filled with calls for Big 3 resignations, Mumbai terror attack developments, and the introduction of the new Meet the Press host …
Full-size video at TPMtv.com.
The NYT is planning to borrow almost a quarter of a billion dollars by taking out a mortgage against its new New York City headquarters. On the one hand this has to do with the specific story of the New York Times. But as I’ve been reading these various stories over the weekend, with the possible bankruptcy of Tribune and McClatchy’s apparent decision to put the Miami Herald on the block, I’ve been struck by how many of these companies took on massive loads of debt quite recently for reasons that strike me as at least questionable, given the paper to digital transition that was on the horizon.
I want to be clear that the structural and technological challenges the newspaper industry faces are vast, ones that would be tremendously challenging to the best business and publishing minds. But it’s hard not to see some really poor decision-making over the last decade that made the present squeeze much, much tighter.
I talked to a reporter today who’s writing about the turnover on the Sunday shows, particularly David Gregory getting the nod to take over for the late Tim Russert as the host of Meet the Press and John King taking over the CNN show. One thing that struck me though is how skewed people’s thinking seems to have gotten about relative age. David Gregory is seen as very young for the job, like a kid. But he’s 38. That’s not really *that* young. I was asked for comment, I think, because I’m one of the young people too, etc. But I’m about to turn 40. King, the reporter told me, is 44.
Some interesting perspective. Walter Cronkite was pushed into retirement when he was, I believe, 64. Wolf Blitzer is 60.
To a degree, this is simply a matter of people living longer and society becoming less rigid about forcing people out when they reach an arbitrary age, which is all to the good. But aside from all the other kinds of diversity that are important on the Sunday shows, some breadth of age diversity is needed as well.
(ed.note: I know I’m going to hear from a lot of people saying, ‘Believe me, kid, 38 is really young. And as a 39 year old, you believe me, I like hearing that. So, I know in relative terms it’s young. But in terms of the range of ages of people who are a real part of the public dialog on news and politics I think this skew is worth considering.)
TPM Reader JM — a recent escapee from the industry — comments …
The most depressing thing I’ve heard in a while was Wall Street Journal reporter Shira Ovide on Chicago public radio this morning describing Tribune Co.’s predicament. She pointed out that the Chicago Tribune itself actually has pretty good cash flow (relatively speaking) and some cash reserves. In other words, this is a company that should still be leading the industry – if it weren’t for its massive, crippling debt.
That debt comes from two of the worst decisions in recent corporate history. The first was Tribune’s purchase of Times Mirror in 2000 for the vastly inflated price of $8 billion, which made the company double down on old media without gaining any strategic benefit. The second bad decision piggy-backed on the first. Swooning from the fallout of the Times Mirror deal (including a very foreseeable $1 billion tax penalty), they paid another $8 billion to put a man who actively hates newspapers in charge of one of the nation’s biggest newspaper operations. What could possibly go wrong?
Just a thought experiment: What if the penalties for a CEO’s business failure were as extravagant as the rewards for success are? What if the executives who did this to Tribune Co. had known that the cost of failure would be the loss of all their assets, that they would be forced to start over with a $7/hour job? I have to think they would have been a little more responsible.
There’s at least something loosely parallel with McClatchy’s need to get rid of the Miami Herald. They’re loaded with debt from the purchase of Knight-Ridder.
As if to reinforce the newspaper trends Josh has been documenting below, the Pulitzer Prize committee has announced that it will begin accepting entries from online-only news outlets, reports Editor & Publisher:
Pulitzer Administrator Sig Gissler told E&P that “we are expanding the Pulitzers to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet.” At the same time, they are “stressing” that all entered material should come from news outlets that publish material at least weekly, “are primarily dedicated to original news reporting, are dedicated to coverage of ongoing stories and that adhere to the highest journalistic principles.”
Gissler said the change, to take effect with the upcoming 2009 prizes, is occurring as part of the prizes’ effort to “keep up with the changing media landscape.”
Good for them.
Given all of the obstacles to bringing a successful prosecution, it’s remarkable that DOJ has indicted those five former Blackwater guards for their roles in the Nisour Square massacre. But one thing in particular is going under-reported in the coverage: In the hours immediately after the shootings, the State Department, who contracted with Blackwater, gave legal immunity to all of the Blackwater guards who were at the scene of the alleged crime in return for their accounts of the incident.
As we’ve reported in the past, DOJ is going to have fun overcoming that hurdle, having to demonstrate that the evidence they gathered for the indictment and prosecution was not fruit of that poison tree.
Tribune Company files for bankruptcy. The company’s holdings include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, South Florida’s Sun Sentinel, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, 23 television stations, cable station WGN, and the Chicago Cubs.
What do all-white clubs and debutante cotillions have to do with the selection of the next chairman of the Republican National Committee?