Ah, Cappello, You're Singing an Odd Tune

In case you missed it, the Los Angeles Times ran an article on Citizen McCaw today, which means, for those scoring at home, it's LA Times 1, News-Press 0. Perhaps the most intriguing part of the article is the end, focussed on McCaw's attorney/mouthpiece Barry Cappello:

Cappello said McCaw had "no interest" in seeing the documentary bearing her name and will continue to run the News-Press as she sees fit, regardless of criticisms from filmmakers or former employees.

Or from the 2000 moviegoers who booed her first appearance in the film while cheering for every journalist and then giving the former N-P employees at the screening a good 3-minute long standing O after the film.

Or from the 10,000 subscribers the paper has lost since "the troubles" began in July 2006.

Or from Ben Bradlee, Sander Vanocur, Lou Cannon, Ann Bardach, or any of the university journalism faculty interviewed in the film who condemned what Wendy McCaw has done.

"This is, literally, like water off her back," Cappello said of the film. "Barking dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on."

Perhaps we should cut Cappello some slack for having a duck (aren't they the ones with water off their backs?) in a caravan (which should be trucks or camels or a great Duke Ellington song or something). Of course that Cappello says "literally" makes it much harder to cut him some slack, especially when you know he's billing a good $600 an hour or whatever his rate is (anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). I guess it's easier to pile up a metaphorical mess than show how Citizen McCaw actually gets anything wrong or misrepresents the official News-Press position.

Ultimately, though, we can't be too surprised that the News-Press hasn't covered the film. I don't think it's because they refuse to give Citizen McCaw any publicity. I simply think it's because they don't have any journalists left to do the job. Then again, Travis Armstrong could write one of his ed-port-orials about it.

Worst than Hearst?

Citizen McCaw had its long awaited premiere Friday night to a sold out Arlington and it lived up to the hype--capturing the essence of the sad destruction of a once solid newspaper. If you want details of the event or the film, go see fine reports in the usual fine places--The Average Man, Craig Smith's Blog, Aguayo Shed. Or see the film's own website, which will tell you about other opportunities to see the flick on the big screen.

I just want to be the film geek I am and point out that the film's title is far from a mean-spirited push. And I mean that about "poor" William Randolph Hearst, of course, as Citizen Kane, as a fictional film, took enough of his life to make it clear the film was based on him, but also changed enough to make him rightfully mad. In particular the film is nasty to Marion Davies, who was far more talented than Susan Alexander Kane. Of course, it might not be a stretch to imagine the Nipper doing some lame floor show at the El Rancho some day, but that's a different story....

That said, the title of the film Citizen McCaw is actually suggested by McCaw's lawyer Barry Cappello. He's the one in the film saying, "So if the publisher wants to be a William Randolph Hearst and start a war in Cuba, they can do it," a moment immortalized in the fictional version of Hearst's life when Kane dictates a telegram that says, "Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems, I'll provide the war."

Now, let's ignore the fact that a publisher of a paper in the size of a town like Santa Barbara better not be able to start a war (Judith Miller's "reporting" in the New York Times and Iraq, that's a different story). What's sadly true is that one can insist McCaw has started a war--on anyone who disagrees with her, and in this case one of those anyone's happens to be the truth.

But there's another scary parallel to Hearst and McCaw beyond the scope of the movie. This is according to Pauline Kael's The Citizen Kane Book--it turns out two years after Kane, the film's screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz fell into Hearst's nasty hands. Driving home drunk (as was his wont), he hit a car right at the gates of Marion Davies' house, while Hearst was inside. The driver was Lee Gershwin, Ira's wife, and while her two passengers were just shook up, she had to get several stitches. Mankiewicz got hauled down to the police station, wasn't particularly good there. He did go over the Gershwin's later with flowers to apologize. But that wasn't enough for Hearst, of course. According to Kael:

Hearst's persistent vindictiveness was one of his least attractive traits. Mankiewicz was charged with a felony, and the minor accident became a major front page story in the Hearst papers across the country for four successive days, with headlines more appropriate to a declaration of war....Mankiewicz had to stand trial on a felony charge. And although he got through the mess of the trial all right, the hounding by the Hearst papers took its toll, and his reputation was permanently damaged.

Can't imagine someone in our town trying to pull something like that, can you?

The Portrait of Dorian McCaw

It's seeming more and more possible that Wendy McCaw uses the same older, more flattering photo of her younger self because she's actually stuck in a time warp. Perhaps hoping to short circuit a broadcast on Los Angeles' KCRW's "The Politics of Culture" today with Lou Cannon and Jerry Roberts (everyone invited from the News-Press declined), she instead offered up over 2200 words on line (and a shorter version in print). And she meant it so much she didn't even hide it behind the pay wall.

Now, one could go through this line by line (pretty much word by word) and pick it apart, but we all have lives and better things to do like dishes, or vacuuming, or nodding off to bad TV. Suffice to say it offers lines that must make Stanford cringe unless their blonde alum writes hefty enough checks. For instance:

You [the rant is addressed to Lou Cannon] assert you are beholden to no union, yet your words mimic the antics of a Union with the gravest history of corruption in its campaign against the News-Press and me as its owner.

OK, I can put up with the inconsistent capitalization of union, but how do words mimic antics? And while she wants, as always, to drag Jimmy Hoffa back kicking and screaming from the Meadowlands or wherever he's buried when discussing the Teamsters, note how that history of corruption immediately connects with a campaign against the N-P? And, of course, poor poor pitiful Wendy.

It's also striking to note her disdain for journalism itself (well, at least journalists--remember, she's an animal lover, not a lover of humanity), a very odd position to take if you actually own a newspaper. I mean, you don't hear the president of ABC say how horrible television is. But instead, she writes things like this:

The world has passed you by. Young people today no longer wear watches, no longer read newspapers, no longer watch TV news.

Here's hoping whatever folks she can still get to work for the shell that was the News-Press can understand how much youth culture is monolithic and stereotypical and more or less dreamed up by someone like Grandpa Simpson.

But separate from her inability to write a sentence, carry on a logical argument, avoid strawmen, and actually have some sense of the real world (no, not the Real World, dearie), there's this--she actually has the nerve to say to Cannon:

I challenge you to state a single legitimate agency "inquiry" that has found we violated a journalistic standard. None exists. It is simply more evidence why certain journalists today have committed a grave disservice to the public they claim to serve.

And, in her entire 2200+ word piece, four words never appear: National Labor Relations Board. It's as if none of the hearings, none of the past year, happened (well, they didn't get reported in the N-P so I guess they didn't). The NLRB isn't a legitimate agency? Maybe McCaw is only accountable to the mysterious fourth branch of US government run by Dick Cheney.

Possession Is Nine-Tenths of the McCaw

So Wendy McCaw has opted to turn our local paper into Carpetbagger Central, first by canning all the local columnists and replacing them with Dr. (of Physiology) Laura, who, of course, comes from Planet (Self-)Righteous, and now hiring a gossip columnist who became a US citizen less than 2 months ago. Give a big Santa Barbara welcome to Richard Mineards, generally billed as one of the world's experts on the British Royal Family, as there's nothing more fascinating and pertinent to today's world than the last vestiges of monarchy and where Prince William puts the royal willie.

It seems Mineards for years wrote for the British tabloid The Daily Express, which bills itself "The World's Greatest Newspaper," so Mineards should feel right at home at the News-Press, which has an equally inflated and mistaken opinion of itself. Indeed, looking at the Wikipedia page about The Daily Express one comes across numerous ways Mineards should sense some deja vu while working for Wendy. The Express "has a reputation for consistently printing conspiracy theories" and "the paper has made such sweeping generalisations about numerous other targets."

Actually, maybe we can work out some special overseas exchange deal and keep Mineards and ship them Travis Armstrong--seems he'd fit in perfectly.

Of course Richard Desmond, owner of the Express, couldn't be less like McCaw--he had made his money owning numerous magazine titles, many salacious (such as Big Ones and Asian Babes). Yep, he made his dough off people fucking while McCaw makes do fucking people over. It's enough to make one an Anglophile.

My Own Private News-Press

Dr. (of Physiology) Laura is back at the News-Press just in time to save the world from its greatest scourge--blogs! (As you know, there's no point in linking as you have to subscribe for such wit, wisdom, and intellectual property.) Seems she's done with the "abundance of media travel responsibilities" that most honest people would call "out flogging the new book" and ready to take on all comers in Santa Barbara. She mostly complains about anonymous comments on blogs, and, of course, having actually talked to numerous anonymi, psychoanalyzes (physiologizes?) them:

It is these very types we all have to watch closely.

Can you imagine these perpetual attackers ever really having tolerance and a diversity approach? If they ran the News-Press, would they keep me, Scott or Travis? Since they spend a lot of time salivating over the demise of the News-Press and anyone and everyone involved with it -- I think they would create their own one-sided tyranny.

First, nice slip there--"their own one-sided tyranny" kind of implies there is a one-sided tyranny right now at the N-P. (It just happens that tyranny gave Schlessinger a column, so it's a good tyranny.) Now, I'm not really anonymous (after all, there must be hundreds of Georges with two greyhounds in town), but I have to admit, if I were put in charge of the News-Press, I would be tyrannical. Call me a brutish dictator, but I'd require all my journalists, editors, and columnists to be competent. To argue using facts and not hearsay and innuendo. To understand the community about which they write. They couldn't hold grudges against enemies real or made-up. They couldn't coddle friends.

They would have to do reporting, and not just tell us what they think people think. For instance, that Dr. (of Physiology) Laura column of 3/15 begins with a rant about why she will not watch Law & Order anymore. It seems it set her off that a recent episode took the sad, sad murder of Adrienne Shelly, lamented on this very blog back when it happened, as a starting point for its plot. Here's her problem with the episode:

Last December, a woman in an apartment building in New York City was brutally and cruelly murdered by an illegal immigrant from Colombia simply because she asked him to keep the noise down a bit on his construction job downstairs. He followed her upstairs and attacked her. She didn't die then. She died when he hung her to make it look like a suicide. This was major news in New York City in December of 2006.

Here we are early in 2007, and -- with their usual "disclaimer" about it not being a "true" story -- they put the exact same scenario in one of their episodes . . . except now, the white, Christian, businessman owner of the construction company is considered the murderer because he is the one to fake the suicide hanging to protect his business.

Imagine the brutal death of your family member "retooled" so that the actual murderer becomes the victim of white, American, corporate greed.

We don't have to imagine anything, Dr. (of Physiology) Laura. We could try to contact Shelly's family (she had a husband and very young daughter) and see if the episode bugged them. Of course, then we'd actually have to mention her name in our column--but why give her that humanity. For what we really want to do is use her case a complaint about political correctness. Her death means nothing to Schlessinger--it's that it didn't get used to beat up on illegal immigrants, and instead made an argument that greedy white men are bad (didn't see the episode--did it suggest all white men are greedy? I bet).

Seems she's "retooled" the murder too, doing the very thing she's accusing the Law & Order folks of doing. Probably because she believes she's the decider about what's law and order and she hates anyone crowding in on her territory. But she's got plenty of company with Wendy McCaw and Crew, for they're the same ones who accuse everyone else of bias when they don't even report on this week's NLRB finding in their own paper.

Cutting Off Your News to Spite Your Facts

It seems as if the next lawsuit for Wendy McCaw will be the University of Missouri-Columbia*. A Reuters summary of what will be sure to bring a new screed rising from the poison pen of Travis Armstrong says:

U.S. newspapers that spend more money on their newsrooms will make more money, according to a study released on Wednesday, which questioned the wisdom of the media industry's trend of cutting jobs to save costs.

The school examined 10 years of financial data, but we all know they released the results now because they have direct connections to Susan Rose (who is no longer a county supervisor just so she has more time to bring down the News-Press). Clearly the article didn't examine what it means if you have to cut your news staff down to 2 because everyone else failed their loyalty test.

The article also offers the following:

"I am delighted to see them post proof that quality precedes profit," Philip Meyer, a professor at the University of North Carolina and author of the book The Vanishing Newspaper [editor's note: this is not the News-Press story, believe it or not], said of the study.

"I don't share the authors' confidence that the industry will appreciate the importance of their result and act on it," he added. "Too many owners are more interested in harvesting than investing."

The harvester on De La Guerra Plaza is certainly a Grim Reaper for journalists and a paper of record for Santa Barbara.

*It's the alma mater of one of the first people actually fired in the purges, and you know that's not a coincidence. Probably is a hotbed of Teamsters making phone calls about spreading nails or damaging trucks too.

From Salsipuedes to Quarantina

It seems being filthy rich makes it mighty easy to ignore anyone else, as if each added zero to one's wealth squeezes out any sense of empathy. (It also seems that this disease can extend to those who drink too much bottled water, or just the corporate kool-aid.) Wicked Witch Wendy McCaw learns of a banner flown above the freeway and in a snit tells six more veteran journalists to hit the highway. Now before Nelville Flynn or some equally snide psuedonymster shows up and says, "It's her paper, she can do what she wants with it," let me say, "But she can't do whatever she wants to employees." Do people really believe employers are all-powerful and that employees must bend to their every whim? That people give up their free will, sense of reason, and personal and professional values when they walk into their place of employment? Sure, they can get out of there while they can. Or they can try to fix things, make things better, for themselves, the workplace, the product. Speaking of that, a newspaper is no ordinary product--it owes something to its community, too. But it seems Wendy and her minions feel like they owe nothing to nobody.

But I've got an idea. While McCaw doesn't seem to care if she has no writers, or if anyone respects the paper, or if she's become a national laughing stock, or if the whole town drops its subscriptions, she has to have news to cover. After all, in both her letters and Travis's editorials, they talk about their desire to cover more local news. So what we need to do is quarantine the News-Press.

What would happen if every news source refused to deal with the N-P until she agreed to sit down and bargain with the union and cut out the vituperative, vengeful bs? What if not a single newsmaker agreed to be interviewed by a N-P reporter? If all arts organizations didn't set up interviews, provide tickets for reviewers, ship in their information for the calendar? Sure, a reporter could still cover open meetings, but without any access, what could they really write about?

Of course, right now it's unclear who could write any N-P stories, with the newsroom so short. But starving the paper from news--and it's our news, our events, so we can control them--right Wendy?--might be one way to get her attention. In some ways she's quarantining herself, as it's impossible to establish the usual, steady, helpful realtionships that generally form between writers and news sources, when, for example, the paper burns through 3 higher education reporters in 9 months. It's hard even to know who to pitch stories to, let alone learn how to be most helpful.

So right now some tough love, as Dr. (of Physiology) Laura might put it, is necessary. Newsmakers, let's act like the News-Press doesn't exist. Maybe then someone might notice she does need other people a teensy bit.